Drops of Mercury
by sarsaparillia
Summary: Or, that time two rich kids tried running away together and accidentally fell in love. — Sasuke/Sakura; 46/5o.
1. of detention

**dedication**: To Sonya, because OMAIGAWD, ILY FOREVER!**  
disclaimer**: Not mine. Although, I have to say, I enjoy fictionpress. These become moot.**  
notes**: "If I believed in fate, I wouldn't be playing with _loaded dice_."

**title**: of detention**  
summary**: Because using a wet shirt to get the attention of one's object of affection is usually _not_ the way to go. — Sasuke/Sakura; o1/5o.

—

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It started with a detention.

Well.

_Actually_, it started with an insult, which turned into a fairly one-sided screaming match, which then turned into a food fight.

Which, in turn, became a detention.

So really, it started with the detention.

Haruno Sakura was _steaming_.

There were only _three things_ in the _entire world_ that had ever made Sakura this mad; first, Naruto (uhm, obvious, his _mission_ in life was to annoy her, and make her want to bang her head against a wall); second, low grades (more obviousness, Sakura's brain was legendary); and third, and _worst of all_: getting food in her hair.

She could not _stand_ it.

But that didn't matter—what _did_ matter was that it started with the detention.

Ordinary days were not uncommon, to Sakura.

And today was _supposed_ to be an ordinary! It _should_ have been on ordinary day. It was entirely ridiculous, and so out of routine that Sakura nearly _cringed_.

That, and the fact that Sakura had detention had never, in her life, had adetention, did not help this situation _at all_.

Because Sakura _liked_ routine. She liked it's… routine-ness. She liked its predictability. She liked the way she _knew_ where it was going to _go_.

And this detention was _so_ not part of today's routine! Not at _all_!

Sakura glanced up through her mashed-potato-smothered bangs (she only twitched a little bit), and looked around, to gaze around at the others in the room.

The whole group was there—anyone who sat at their table at lunch, really. Karin and Temari were idly playing hang-man on the white-board; Naruto was making _way_ too much noise to be considered legal, Hinata sitting next to him and blushing crimson –poor girl–; Kiba was shouting back and forth to Ino (they were feeding off each other, and Sakura could almost _feel_ the pent-up sexual tension); and Sasuke was being his normal, apathetic self, sitting in a corner, and looking ridiculously attractive.

How la-ame.

Of course, every single one of them was covered in various foods—for example, there were noodles in Shikamaru's hair. Ick.

Sakura growled. This detention was _pointless_. The _whole damn cafeteria_ had been involved in the fight, but _no-o-o-o_, the only ones to actually get in trouble were those who associated with _Naruto_ (how they how they figured it was Naruto was beyond Sakura—at lunch, the only food-related activities Naruto engaged in were eating, and eating contests with Chougi, which… also involved eating. Naruto considered the cafeteria ramen sacred. He'd never throw it).

It was ridiculous (and _yes_, Sakura could over-use that word if she _wanted_, thankyouverymuch!).

Sakura mutely growled to herself, again, and ducked her head back down. When she found out who had actually started this mess… The police would discover a brutal series of murders, Sakura was sure.

And if they had her name written all over them, who really cared?

The room was mostly quiet, now—Naruto was murmuring softly to Hinata, his quiet whispers right next to the girl's ear. Said girl was bright red, and Sakura almost giggled aloud. If Neji heard about this (and he was bound to—Ino was not Konoha's Resident Gossip Queen for _nothing_), Sakura was pretty sure that Naruto was a dead man.

Ah, what a nice thought…

With a sigh, the roseate-haired girl stood up, and walked to the window.

It was raining again. It _always_ rained in the winter—Sakura was so _tired_ of rain, Even snow and freezing cold would be better then the constant _dampness_.

But the rain didn't look like it was letting up. Actually, it looked like it was getting worse…

Sakura was rather tempted to bang her head against the wall. But that would only lead to grossness, because then the mashed potatoes in her hair would smear all over the place and be all icky, and and –

And it was right then that Sakura decided she needed to get to the bathroom. She _had_ to get that _guck_ out of her hair.

As she got her bathroom pass from the teacher (Kakashi-sensei never really cared about anything, anyways), she didn't even realized that _that_ was the beginning of the end.

Sakura looked up into the mirror, her face and hair dripping wet. The bubble-gum pink mass had darkened to deep-ish red, and Sakura stared at herself.

"Bleh," she muttered, after a second. She wrung out her hair, and held it away from her neck and bare shoulders as she looked for something to dry her hair off with.

The paper dispenser was out.

Sakura rolled her eyes. Just her freakin' luck; the only thing remotely dry in the room was her shirt, and she'd taken that off in the first place to keep it dry.

Just. her. _freaking_. _luck_.

'_Screw it_', Sakura thought. She grabbed the kill-me-now orange shirt, and toweled off her hair. It could be worse; really, it could.

There was a knock on the bathroom door, ad Sakura slammed a palm against her forehead.

'_Dear Karma. What the hell? Why, _today_?_' Sakura mentally asked, as she tugged the mostly-wet kill-me-now orange shirt down. It stretched.

"This day _actually_ could not get any worse," Sakura grumbled to herself, ad wrenched the door open.

She'd totally just jinxed herself.

_Eff_.

Uchiha Sasuke was standing there in all his broody, pretty glory, a blank look on his mostly god-like face. He was standing with his hand raised, and he looked like he was about to start knocking again.

Sakura turned a very unflattering shade of purple, and they stared at each other for a moment. Then she chocked out "_Yes_?"

"Teacher sent me to find you," he muttered.

Sakura just gawked.

She couldn't even form words—she'd only wanted the kid for, what, five years? Nothing too big, right? It wasn't _that_ long, _right_?

And then Sakura took stock of her appearance; wet shirt, wet hair, dumbfounded look… '_very_ attractive, Sakura', she thought to herself, sarcasm lacing her mental tone.

"Sakura," she heard again, and Sakura snapped her head up to look at him. He continued to stare down at her. Damn his height.

"C-can I have five minutes? I-"

"Your shirt is inside out. And backwards. Yeah, you can," he said as he turned and stalked off, leaving Sakura to gape after him. God, the kid was such an _ass_, sometimes… But so good-looking, it almost made it okay. But only almost.

Then Sakura looked down, and realized that he was just being frank. Her still-wet shirt _was_ inside out. And backward.

The unflattering shade of purple that was her face turned darker, and she slammed the bathroom door closed. She needed to fix her clothes in _private_, thankyouverymuch.

It only took her eight and a half seconds to fix her kill-me-now-orange shirt. After she had put it on again (and made sure it was outside out, and on facing the way it was supposed to), she slipped out of the bathroom, and headed back towards the detention room.

What happened next can only be explained through sheer stupidity (or maybe through the fact that Sakura was busy contemplating Sasuke's total attractive-asshole-ish-ness. But sheer stupidity had a little more dignity attached to it, at the very least).

Sakura opened the wrong door, and entered the wrong room.

And she didn't even realize it until the door had closed behind her, and she was cloaked in total darkness.

_Damn it_.

Sakura immediately turned around, and tried the knob. It was a stupid mistake that could be easily fixed. Of course. When the knob refused to budge, she blinked.

And then almost wailed.

She was locked in the janitor's closet.

She was locked in the _janitor's closet_.

She was _locked_ in the _janitor's closet_.

And there was nothing she could do about it. Sakura moaned in sadness, and finally have in to temptation. She slammed her forehead against the closest, hard vertical thing (it happened to be the door).

The 'thunk' was _immensely_ satisfying. It was also _immensely_ painful, and all she wound up doing was hurting her large-ish forehead.

Sakura actually wailed, this time.

Loudly.

After ten minutes of rather loud wailing, and no one coming to rescue her, Sakura gave up. She sat down on the floor, and made herself comfortable. It was likely that she was going to be in that tiny janitor's closet all night—or at least until her parents started to wonder where she was.

And that might not be for _hours_. Sakura wailed loudly again.

This time, however, the door _did_ open. Sakura couldn't tell who it was, but before she could say anything, the door swung shut behind whoever it was, and they were engulfed in darkness, once again.

"Sakura?"

Sasuke. God, this was _so cliché_, it almost made Sakura sick to her stomach. Locked in a closet with the one boy she'd been lusting after (Sakura found this much more dignified then 'in love with'—she didn't _need_ him, she just wanted to _rape_ him in his sleep. Totally different context), for, what, _years_?

Sakura groaned, and replied. "We are _so screwed_, Sasuke!"

"Hn?" he grunted, a slight question in his voice. Sakura, after knowing him for so long, had a Sasuke-Translator lodged in her head, and it converted the 'Hn?' to "Why?"

"I think the door only opens from the outside," Sakura murmured with a sigh.

"…Fuck." This did not need translating, according to the Sasuke-Translator. It came out to exactly the same thing, any way she looked at it.

Sakura let out a hysteric giggle, and she was sure Sasuke was giving her a weird look. It probably said something along the lines of 'What the hell is wrong with you? This situation is not amusing!"

But it was amusing. It was very, very amusing—the Great Sasuke Uchiha, captain of the basketball team, current heir of the Uchiha Corporation, straight-A student, and, right at that moment, covered in the remnants of a food fight.

Sakura's hysteric giggles got just a little (just a lot) louder, and quickly turned into full-blown, chest-wrenching, stomach-and-cheek-hurting laughter. It was that crazy kind of laughter that seems to happen when there's just no other reaction.

And this whole situation was—was just so absurd that Sakura really couldn't help it.

For almost ten minutes, Sakura shook with laughter, and Sasuke just stared at down at her—or at least where he thought she was.

The damn closet was still darker then black. Damn it.

Sakura finally calmed herself down long enough to carefully pat the ground next to her. "You can sit down, if you want," she said kindly.

She heard him sit down with an ungraceful 'thump'.

It almost set Sakura off again. She managed to restrain the giggles, and together, they sat in silence. It was a quiet sort of companionship, and it was… kinda nice.

Sakura tilted her head up, and stared up at the invisible ceiling.

Stupid darkness.

"How long do you think we'll be in here, Sasuke?" Sakura asked, quietly (and _no_, her throat was _not_ a little bit sore from all the wailing).

"Hn…"

Sakura glared at the spot next to her that was radiating heat. That reply was _not helpful_ at _all_!

"Probably a long time, huh? I guess no one's noticed we're not back yet, I guess…"

"Sakura, be quiet," he said.

She stuck her tongue out at him. She didn't care if it was childish. It made her feel entirely better. The food fight hadn't been _her_ fault, for goodness' sake!

And _he_ still had tomato sauce on his shirt. At the very least, Sakura had managed to keep her clothes clean.

"Like I care what _you_ think. Sorry Sasuke, but if it's between silence, and my random theorizing, I'll go with Option Number Two."

Sakura _felt_ his eye-roll, and she smiled to herself, just a little bit. And then she went back to theorizing. "I wonder who started."

"What?"

Sakura blinked. Had he just _acknowledge_ something she'd said? Was that even _possible_? But she answered him anyways, "The food fight. I was just wondering who started it."

"…Hn."

Sakura pursed her lips. It _had_ to have come from their table, because that bitch, Mary-Sue, had gotten the first-thrown piece of pizza on her head. Sakura had watched said piece fly, and the aftermath had been… unpleasant, to say the least.

Mary-Sue had started _screaming_. Her face had turned purple, and she'd started throwing her grapes at everyone surrounding her.

Which, of course, ad set the whole goddamn cafeteria off. And the only ones to get in trouble were the ones who sat with Naruto. Of course.

Sakura tilted her head the other way, stretching the tendons in her neck, and furrowed her brow. It _had_ to have been someone at their table; it was the only logical place, given the angle that the piece of pizza had come flying from.

It would have been someone quiet –someone who no one would suspect–, with a good arm, and generally good… aim…

Good aim, like in _basketball_. The answer hit Sakura like a ton of bricks.

"It was _you_!" she screeched. "_You_ are the reason that I was covered in mashed potatoes! You _asshole_!"

Sakura could _feel_ the smirk on his lips, as Sasuke 'hn-ed'. She seethed.

"I'm going to kill you. I am just going to throttle you-" Sakura went off on one of her more or less infamous rants.

Sasuke let her rant and for a few seconds, before he interrupted her. "She was bad-mouthing you."

"And I—wait, what?"

Sasuke's voice was quiet and patient as he repeated himself. "She was bad-mouthing you."

Sakura raised an eyebrow. "Uhm… so? She bitches about me all the time. We hate each other."

"She called you a slut."

Sakura blinked. This was not news to her –Mary-Sue called her a slut eight times a day–, but the way Sasuke seemed to be getting so worked up about it… that _was_ new. She said again "So?"

"So—just—crap—how do I—_damn_ it, Sakura," he growled out.

It was still dark. Then his hands found her face, curled into her still-wet hair, and tugged her towards him. Even in the dark, Sakura could see the dark wells that were his eyes. Their foreheads were touching.

"Uh… hi?" Sakura whispered-asked.

"Hey," he murmured back.

And then his lips were on hers, and Sakura's brain processes generally died on the spot.

—

"Hey, N-Naruto?"

"Yeah, Hinata?"

"D-do you know w-where Sakura and S-Sasuke are?"

"No, I_—wait_! That bastard! He's probably raping her in a closet! We have to find them, before he does something _evil_ to her!"

Naruto grabbed Hinata's hand, and dragged her out of the room. It only took them about a minute to find the other two teens.

The scream of general horror and fear was equal to nothing ever heard before on earth. Neither Naruto nor Hinata was ever the same.

—

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_fin_.

**notes2**: wow, i am freakishly obsessive.


	2. tiger, tiger

**disclaimer**: _hiss_. the bits of poem are from Tiger, Tiger – William Blake.  
**dedication**: to les-y, because i am FAIL and can not manage ANYTHING on time.  
**notes**: excuse my over-use of _italics_. they are meh babes. and yes, i know it's ridiculously weird (and makes little to no sense). i don't care.  
**notes2**: hap-py birth-day to yo-u… les, i think i write introspectives too much.

**title**: tiger, tiger  
**summary**: The sun burnt incandescent orange-red against the aquamarine sky. — Sasuke/Sakura; o2/5o.

—

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—

_Tiger, tiger, burning bright  
in the forests of the night_

—

"Oh god, oh god, oh god…"

The murmured words were lost to the wintry wind, and the girl's breath came out in puffs of steam. It was a bad night. A cold night. A moonless night.

"Breathe, Sak, _breathe_…"

It wasn't supposed to go like this. _It wasn't supposed to go like this_.

"Oh god, oh god, oh god…"

She was running, again. She was always running. Running and running, and, _god_, doing _everything she could_ to stay alive, but it—it just—

It just wasn't enough.

It was never enough. The girl looked up, and let the stars reflect off her eyes. She didn't know who she was, that night. _It wasn't supposed to turn out like this_. The world lit up with sparkle-lights, and Haruno Sakura did not stumble.

"Oh god, oh god, _oh god_…"

She wrapped the striped scarf—ink on ink in the half-light of the street leading towards home—tighter around her throat. The damn cold. The damn, damn cold. The girl slowed, and rubbed her arms. The friction barely raised any heat in her mostly-numb body.

It was so damn cold.

The wind hissed, icy, across the back of Sakura's neck. She didn't tremble, but the goose bumps rising on her arms screamed otherwise. Running, running; running towards the trees, because the trees were safe and it –

It was _not_ supposed to go like _this_.

"Oh god, oh god, _oh god_…"

But then, there was never any honour, not in the middle of a war, and all Sakura could think was that she had _screwed up_. Again.

Again.

_Again_.

How many had died, this time? It was just a stupid mistake—she had to learn to stop underestimating this Game. It was going to be the death of her.

Playing for keeps had never been part of The Plan.

Sakura laughed a little bitterly, and sped up. The Plan was shot to hell, and now she—she had nowhere to go. All she could do was keep running, and _hope_ that she could lose them in the trees.

The shadows moved in the distance, and Sakura dropped all pretence of stealth. The trees, the trees, they were so, _so_ close –

But it was never enough, and immortality was catching. As Sakura's eyes closed, she caught a flicker of pale-pale-dead skin, and dark eyes.

She hated herself for one more conscious second –goddamn stupid cold, goddamn stupid mistakes, stupid, stupid, _stupid_–, and then there was nothing.

—

_In what distant deeps or skies  
burnt the fire of thine eyes?_

—

She woke to a symphony of silence.

Her mouth tasted like sawdust, and eons of deserts gone by. The room was not her own, and Sakura pushed pink-pink strands of hair away from her dull green eyes. She always did hate it when she couldn't see.

"Hello?" she called—or, almost whispered. The words echoed around the empty room, ringing back and forth until her voice was magnified a hundredfold. She was weak, so weak, sometimes, and Sakura felt disgusted with herself.

She was perfectly, and utterly alone.

She sat very, very still for a second, and let the stillness wash over her body. It was rare, to have such stillness, rare to have a moment to herself, rare to be… so alone.

"You're awake."

The words came from somewhere in the shadows, and Sakura instinctively drew the covers up to her chest. The tone was foreign—smooth and dark as rich chocolate, but angry, so angry; thick with malicious intent.

Sakura suddenly understood the very real danger she was in.

The Game was over. The Plan had failed. Real Life was just beginning.

—

_And when thy heart began to beat,  
what dread hand and what dread feet?_

—

The sun burnt incandescent orange-red against the aquamarine sky. The colour was fresh-fresh blood against a splatter-canvas of deep blue and purple, and Sakura casually looked over at her jailer.

He was beautiful; there was no denying that. Tinged with the bloody-red sunlight, his features took on a strange, mortal grace, and Sakura found herself trying less and less frequently to escape. There was no point in trying, anymore.

Two weeks, already. Tick tock.

Time didn't seem to matter so much, here. It just… didn't. Sakura quietly wondered how the others were doing. Naruto, Hinata, Ino—she hoped they weren't cold.

That goddamn cold.

"Come," her jailer said, and jerked his head back towards the inside of the compound (she didn't know what else to call it—prison, jail, cage; they all applied). She twitched, and shook him off, like he was an irksome fly.

From moth to flame (ashes to ashes, dust to –); resistance was futile from the beginning.

They called him Sasuke.

—

_What the anvil? What dread grasp  
dare its deadly terrors clasp?_

—

Sometimes she screamed at him. It never did much good, but it made her feel better. All Sakura really wanted was to go home.

But she knew, when she didn't make it to those goddamn _trees_, that home was something she didn't really have anymore.

She spent her days staring at the roof of the compound-prison-jail, and dreaming of sitting next to Naruto and Hinata's little girl, and maybe sipping hot chocolate with Ino. She clenched the striped scarf in her fingers –ink on ink, even now, even now–, and wondered if she was going crazy.

Sasuke stood in the shadows, and watched as his ward began to slip away.

—

_When the stars threw down their spears,  
and watered heaven with their tears_

—

Sakura traced pictures on the ceiling in the colourless stucco. There was nothing else to do. She was going crazy, stir-crazy, sparkle-lights-crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy, and there was nothing she could do to change it.

"Hey," she heard, and she turned her cushioned head to look at her jailer.

(How long had she been here? She can't remember…)

"Yeah?" she murmured back. She knew him, now, knew him well enough to forget formalities and to forget that he was beautiful and to forget that part of her _ached_ for him, so, _so_ constantly. She just… _forgot_.

"Why?" he asked, and Sakura stared blankly at him.

"Why what?" she tossed the proverbial question ball back to him; always answer a question with a question with a question, it was like playing catch with someone she hated.

"You stay."

It is a question, not a statement, and Sakura wonders if he really knows her well enough to beat her at her own game.

Probably not.

"Yeah, so?"

"You… Hn."

Sakura laughed, desperate and crazy, even as she twisted her body on the bed, to face him (she felt her back crack in eight places—snap, crackle, pop, pop, _pop_). "I want to _run_, Sasuke. I want to _run_. That's all I've ever wanted. Just to run. I don't even—I don't even _care_, I just want to _run_, again…"

She trailed off, and they both wondered when she'd lost her will to live. Sakura knew that she was full of life, once; but she can't really remember it.

It had been so long. Tick tock.

—

_Did He smile His work to see?  
Did He who made the lamb make thee?_

—

It was warm.

Lovely, warm, and for the first time in a long time, Sakura remembered what it was like to breathe fresh air, to feel bright sunlight on her face…

"Oh god, oh god, oh god…"

She was running. And running and her heart was pumping, and her lungs were gasping, and she was running faster then she ever had, ever before, ever in her entire life.

"Oh god, oh god, _oh_ _god_…"

The striped scarf –ink on ink, even in the sunlight– streamed out behind her. Just to the trees, just to those _goddamn trees_; it wasn't far, and then–

Then she was free.

—

_Tiger, tiger, burning bright  
in the forests of the night_

—

—

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_fin_.

**notes3**: edit, edit, edit…


	3. countdown

i know. i know. i know. i deserve to be killed for disappearing for so long. I'M SORRY.  
**disclaimer**: dude. if i owned Naruto… the canon would not be such a tragedy.  
**dedication**: to the bitches i love the best: eleni, sonya, and les.  
**notes**: DO NOT BLAME ME FOR THIS.  
**notes2**: "& it broke my brain." — Neil Gaiman.  
**notes3**: i'm experimenting with repetition again. i apologize.

**title**: countdown  
**summary**: She was one _insert word here_ shit show. — Sasuke/Sakura; o3/5o.

—

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f**iv**_e_.  
(**fan**-tas-_tic_)

She's standing on the pier, again.

Her hair is curls of bubblegum pink, messy and out of place; her eyes are more or less green pits of sparkle-light—crazed with fear and stained with rings of black eyeliner; face made up, and it's _Pretty Girl_ all over again; heels three inches too high, legs bared, skirt four inches too short.

_She's one __**fantastic**__ shit-show_, Sasuke thinks, lips curled in disgust and admiration.

She's also not the girl he knew, even a year ago.

It's almost pitiful.

The early summer night air is warm, the moon glimmering off the water, carnival lights glitter-shining behind them both, and Sakura's an alcoholic mess. Sasuke sneers—she's not the same, _not_ the same, not the _same_.

"I know you're there," she tells him from very far away—the end of the pier is only feet away, but Sakura is lost in her own head, staring away from him, out towards the water, and Sasuke doesn't know how to bring her back to reality.

He's not even sure if he wants to.

"They told me you weren't coming back," she says, and it's conversation, conversation, conversation; chatter, easy replies, nothing special. Sasuke has never been particularly good at it.

"Holidays," he mutters as way of explanation.

Her back is still turned. He wonders what she's thinking—short skirt, someone else's barely-there shirt, everything, everything, _who is this girl in Sakura's skin_?

"Oh," she says.

It's quiet, then.

Toxic.

(_Hey, I'm Sakura—who are you?_

That was a long time ago, though.)

"Sakura," he says, and it's conversation, conversation, conversation, but he was never very good at it, and the words feel thick and wrong on his tongue.

She looks at him over her shoulder, and Sasuke sneers again. She's not the same, not the same, not _his_ girl, anymore. He can smell the alcohol from where he's standing, and he doesn't even know if there's anything to say.

"What?" she asks.

Sasuke can say nothing—it's like conversation, and choking on it, his throat closing.

She almost smiles. It's strangely dreamy and her eyes gleam a slitted sort of _knowing_ that Sasuke doesn't know how to shake.

"You always were bad at getting back to me, weren't you?" It's a rhetorical question on Sakura's part, her lips parted and shimmer-glossed in the dull glow of the moonlight. Sasuke winces—so she hasn't forgiven him that, yet.

Of course she hasn't.

There's glitter on her eyelids. Sakura has always been the kind of girl to glitter in the dark.

And Sasuke knows that she does glitter—watched her dance in the pounding heat and beat of dance clubs, when sequins loose their flash, and her skin is beaded with sweat, and too close, too close, too close–

_One __**fantastic**__ shit-show_, he thinks again, and tries to reconcile the smiling, innocent seventeen-year-old picture he has in his head with this jaded three-years-older almost-woman.

He can't do it.

She's already gone.

—

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_f_ou**r**.  
(un-**be**-_lie_-**va**-ble)

He sees her again, two weeks later, and they're both a little more sober. She's with a mutual friend of theirs—the girl has red hair and glasses, and he doesn't even remember her name.

Sasuke is standing in the shade of a tree, and it's summer, summer, summer; freedom made tangible, electricity through his veins. Sasuke can't figure out why he can't get the image of her at night out of his head—what they had (how long ago was it?), it wasn't love.

Sasuke doesn't even really know what love is.

But Sakura's laughing like wind-chimes, strains of music caught on the breeze, and Sasuke finds himself caught in spider-web memories of ice-skating, iced coffee, and feelings put on ice.

He watches her, hungry for the emotion on her face, watches the razorblade smile, and the danger flickering in her eyes—she's not the same, not the same, not the _same_.

(Where did you go, Sakura? Who's that girl with the flashy smile in your skin?)

Sasuke doesn't even have the nerve to go speak to her.

_She's one __**unbelievable**__ shit-show_; he thinks and thinks, _like always_.

Nothing's changed.

—

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t_hr_**e**e.  
(_spec_-**ta**-cu-_lar_)

The third time he's in her presence this summer, and she's a shit-show, again, grinding against someone else –another girl, this time with long blonde hair and a smile that screamed _sexuality_– he might have known once, long ago. He doesn't even recognize her under the flashing lights and the make-up and the less-then-there clothing.

(What happened to his innocent girl? Where did she go?)

"Hn," he grumbles, and pulls her away from the masses of bodies undulating around them. Sasuke has always hated places like this—now is no different, but Sakura needs saving; the slit-cut knowledge is in her eyes again, and she's almost gone.

"Hey Sasuke," she tells him, and she's close, pink hair obscuring his vision, the smell of her skin in his nose.

Christ, he should have known that this wasn't a good idea.

"They said you weren't coming back," she tells him again, and it rings warning bells in Sasuke's head, because it always started like this before—it ended like this, too.

It always ends like this.

She's liquid desire in his arms, and Sasuke _almost_ forgets why he wanted to save her from herself in the first place; once, _just once_, it would never hurt, and she probably wouldn't remember anything, anyways.

But Sasuke is not like that—and Sakura would never forgive him.

_A __**spectacular**__ shit show, isn't she?_ Asks a voice in his head, and it takes all of Sasuke's will to let her go; Sakura is magical, a mermaid in human skin, memory and summer and freedom—all the things Sasuke is sure he left behind a long, long time go.

"You came back," she murmurs softly.

"Hn," he replies, because he still can't speak, and it's conversation, conversation, conversation that belongs to someone else, and the words, he's suffocating on the words–

"It's been a while," she says, and it's like listening to a waterfall, the way she speaks, because he can hear the words screaming like sirens in his ears. And the pounding beat of the music, it's just become a roar of white noise. And everything—everything pales in comparison.

_Yes_, the voice murmurs, and Sasuke thinks of nights under the stars, _Yes, she's a __**spectacular**__ sort of shit show_.

He doesn't know her, anymore.

(Where did you go, Sakura?)

—

.

.

.

.

.

**t**_w_o.  
(mag-**ni**_-fi_-**cent**)

Sasuke is intelligent.

And that's probably why it took his brain such a long, long time to come to the conclusion that if he doesn't save her, no one will. He knows Sakura will be left to flounder, alone and lost—everyone always leaves.

_Always_.

He swore, once, to never let that happen. Not to her. Not _again_.

_She's a shit show, but such a __**magnificent**__ one, it's almost alright_, he thinks, and moves a strand of her pastel-in-the-sunlight pink hair out of her face.

He knows she won't remember a thing.

—

.

.

.

.

.

o**n**_e_.  
(**ex**-tra-_va_-**gant**)

The leaves are starting to change from summer's brilliant green to autumn's fiery, angry red, and Sasuke's wondering if Sakura even knows what she looks like. Men's shirt, short skirt, the whispered word _slut_ hisses past him, and Sasuke hates the world.

He's going to have to leave, soon.

He clenches his jaw, and Sakura takes no notice. If this was (a long time ago) high school, he wouldn't have had to worry—would have cherished the silence, and the for-once naivety.

But it's not high school, and she's hardly Sakura –although her laughter is the same, she's not, and there has to be more to it–, now.

"Everybody knows," she says, and she looks at him through lowered lashes, face painted on with make-up and stars stitched into her eyes.

"Hn," he grunts, because the words never-never come, and he thinks that she deserves better—or at least, she deserves someone that will acknowledge her existence. That sort of thing has always been hard for him.

Her attitude, today, is steel and black leather, and the girl who dances on tables is out for blood—Sasuke knows that he should stop trying.

But he can't, can't, can't.

Because she's Sakura, and she's standing next to yet another girl –this one has blue hair, and Sasuke could care less; the girl he's—in… (then he realizes he doesn't even know what the feeling of disgust and adoration in his stomach _is_) well, _Sakura_ already has strange hair, why would he want another?–, and she's smiling like the whole sky.

And Sasuke remembers why he hates the world.

_The girl's one __**extravagant**__ shit show_, Sasuke knows, but he can't help himself—he never could, not even if he wanted to.

"You're ridiculous," he mutters grumpily, and it takes all of his will-power not to smile when she throws back her head and laughs, her eyelids shimmering again, smears of eye-liner darkening her eyes to smoky-sultry orbs of almost-lust.

He knows, then, that all that glitters is not gold.

—

.

.

.

.

.

z_er_**o**.  
(_fan_-tas-**tic**)

They're together on the pier, again.

She's sitting there, swinging her legs over her water like a child, and it's been a long time for them both. Later summer has always been a hard time—it makes them both remember times when things (between them, between their worlds, between _everything_) were better.

Sasuke's learning to forget, and Sakura is still only beginning to remember.

They are still very different—they always were different, always, _always—_but it's a quieter difference, now.

Sasuke sits next to her, and thinks that it's probably better, now, when they both have begun to grow up—she needed a reason to stop, and he needed a reason to stay. And sometimes, he thinks that maybe they are not good for each other, and most of the time, he just thinks that she's simply insane…

But once in a while, he will think back to that first night, and see her eyes, dark and half-crazed with fear and self-loathing, and will quietly compare them to her eyes now (the green is clear and empty of shame, mostly), and he will have known that it was the only choice he could have ever made.

And so he sits back, and looks at the girl (_the girl who used to be such a __**fantastic**__ shit show—are you proud of her?_) sitting next to him.

She just smiles, and Sasuke knows that this is the best he could have ever done.

—

.

.

.

.

.

_fin_.

**notes4**: more editing.


	4. amber glances

**disclaimer**: not mine.  
**dedication**: to les, for always staying up with me (and for being my future husband [/wife? Who's the man in this relationship, anyways, les?]. beetch.)  
**notes**: i really enjoy this format. i dunno why.  
**notes2**: i catalogue things too much, and everyone likes to make fun of my OCD. This is Not Cool.  
**notes3**: so. like. i seem to have this thing for Sakura being a hooker. guys, i dunno, either.  
**notes4**: I AM NOT COMING BACK. WTF. (ten bucks says i regress back to hermit status by the end of the month.)

**title**: amber glances**  
summary**: Somewhere between Sakura and the three-day supply of weed in his back pocket, Sasuke had lost his soul. "I'd die, and kill the whole world, if I had to." — Sasuke/Sakura; o4/5o.

—

.

.

.

.

.

At fourteen, Sakura didn't remember what it was like to be innocent. All she knew, then, was bruises, and alcohol-induced stupors, and sitting in long, empty hallways wearing little more then a dirty shift, too short, sleeves too long. It was an endless cycle of deprivation, blood, and violence.

That was all Sakura knew, for a long, long time.

At fourteen, Sakura's body belonged less to herself, than the clothes she wore belonged to her.

People passed in and out of her life like leaves caught on the wind, sand slipping through an open hand. That was Sakura's life, with very few exceptions. But once in a while, Sakura would meet someone who actually paid attention to the fact that she had a soul—that she wasn't just something to _play_ with.

That didn't happen too often, though.

At fourteen, Sakura met Uchiha Sasuke.

It was only a passing glance. She was being led to the next room, to do something she would feel dirty about for a week, and he was being led to over-see exactly how this part of the yakuza was run—the part he would inherit, that is.

It was a passing glance. Her eyes met his for barely a quarter of a second.

They both saw something they were not expecting to see. Sakura saw a very lonely teenage boy—he couldn't have been much older then her, maybe a year or two, and what they were prepping him for was not something any one person should see; Sakura knew that, knew it very, very well. Sasuke saw a haughty girl with fire in her exotic green eyes—saw the hatred there, the sickness, and he hated the whole situation, then, as much as she did.

It was just a passing glance.

But it would change both their lives, forever.

—

.

.

.

.

.

Because then the glances started.

Sakura didn't want to know that coldly beautiful boy; she'd seen a sliver of his soul, a spark, a flash, and she didn't want to see any more.

She knew that if she did, she would do something that was irreversible.

Oh, just like fall in love.

There was only one rule to the world that Sakura lived in (not by choice, never by choice—how could something like being kidnapped be by _choice_—), and that was that girls like Sakura never fell in love. Taboo, it was so, so taboo, and wrong, and horrible. She knew it was wrong. Wrong, to want to escape something she had never wanted in the first place.

Sometimes, Sakura cursed her strange, foreign colouring. It got her into this.

But maybe it could get her out.

So the glances continued.

He would appear, sometimes, and cast a bored, icy fleeting look about the room, like he was looking for something. Some would say that when he saw the flash of pink that was Sakura's hair, he would tense, if only slightly. Their eyes would meet.

And then he would continue on his way.

She didn't learn that his name was Sasuke until much later; but she did know that he was rich, and obviously important enough to warrant a tour. There weren't that many people that warranted a tour.

Perhaps the yakuza thought that they were secretive, and perhaps they were—but if there was one thing that remained the same, no matter what happened, no matter how much time passed, no matter what era it was; it was that servants talked.

At fourteen, Sakura began to understand why people gossiped.

—

.

.

.

.

.

Sakura's fifteenth birthday came and passed. No fuss was made, and Sakura was simply allowed a quiet, free night. She cherished it, and stayed away from the long hallways-lit-by-kerosene that housed the other girls.

That was two nights before he asked her for her name.

The other girls tittered—Sakura had grown up with them, under dingy, dirty light bulbs, and it was all she could do not to turn around _hiss_ at them. If she could get out, buy her own goddamn freedom, she would come back, and get them all out of there.

They all knew it, and provided Sakura the perfect cover to murmur "I don't have a name, Sasuke-kun."

The shock that filtered into his eyes provided Sakura a strange sense of satisfaction, and she felt his eyes on her exposed back, her exposed legs—it was a black corset and a white feather boa for clothing and very little else, today.

Sakura shot him a glance over her shoulder through sultry, smoky eyes, and smacked her ass at him, even as she was heading towards another room (if the bastard tonight left bruises, Sakura was just- just- just going to be sick. Too many bruises, too many, too many).

He had no idea what he was getting into.

Until he did, Sakura wasn't going to let him know her name.

—

.

.

.

.

.

At fifteen, Sakura spat out a glob of blood on the floor, and winced as an old friend tried to make her stop flinching as the girl tended to the violent gashes that lined Sakura's ribs. Blood trickled down pale skin in thin rivulets. Sakura hated the world.

"You have to stop fighting it," the girl murmured tiredly.

Sakura shook her head, her jaw clenched. "Not yet, Ino. He's almost_—ow_, you whore!—paying _attention_."

The blonde sat back, and let Sakura alone.

She knew that Sakura wanted to believe that people escaped this place, that freedom was something that actually existed.

But it didn't.

Not in places like this.

—

.

.

.

.

.

At sixteen, Sasuke asked her for her name a second time.

"You ne'er told me y'ur name…"

He was drunk, decorum gone, dark hair across even darker eyes, sitting on a plush burgundy seat in the middle of a room that Sakura hadn't even known existed. He smelled like fine whiskey, amber liquid sloshing out of a crystal bottle and onto the table. Sakura wrinkled her nose.

"You're drunk, Sasuke-kun," she told him boredly; she studied the hem of her very sheer made-of-frills dress.

"An' you're a ho'ker," he slurred at her.

She slapped him.

Her hand left a welt, raised and red, on the side of his face. She didn't give a _damn_ who he thought he was, then_—no one_ called her a hooker. She wheeled, and strode for the door, shoulder-length bubble-gum hair dancing angrily behind her.

Before her hand was on the knob, the air was knocked out of her lungs, and Sakura found herself pressed against the hard oak of the door, a solid male body behind her. The whiskey on his breath made her shudder in distaste—the_ customers_ were usually most violent when that vile drink poisoned their minds, Sakura knew.

His voice had lost all pretence of inebriation. He hissed "Don't ever touch me like that, again."

At sixteen, Sakura looked Sasuke Uchiha in the eye, and told him to "Kiss my _ass_, Uchiha."

At sixteen, Sakura was kissed on the mouth by a man for the first time without receiving a bruise somewhere on her body, in return.

—

.

.

.

.

.

Seventeen came and went, and Sakura would find herself staring out the window at the rain, sometimes.

Tokyo was a dreary city, in the fall.

She felt a presence behind her, and she shot a glance back at Sasuke. She had a black eye—Sakura knew he hated this place, what it represented; but she also knew that he hated it more-so because of what it did to her.

She shook, sometimes, to think that he may have ended up just like the others in his family.

"Sakura, stop."

She shook her head, her swollen eye throbbing. No, she wasn't going to stop, not until she watched this place burn to the ground. Sakura knew that things would be better when this whole world _burned_.

"I _can't_, Sasuke-kun. You know that. Not yet. You—" she broke off, her voice dying for a moment, before returning, a soft, imploring contralto "—You were willing to listen. The others have to listen, too. I don't want to see Ino with bruises, or Karin looking like a human punching bag, or Hinata so afraid of physical contact that she's never going to recover. I don't want those things, anymore, Sasuke."

She only rarely dropped that damn honorific, Sasuke knew.

So she was serious.

"You will die."

She just stared at him, her gaze level and quiet.

"I know that."

She sat back against the window seat, and moved her legs just enough for him to sit down.

Sasuke took the quietly offered seat.

But that didn't stop him from slipping his hand into his right pocket, and carefully running a finger over the packet that held just a small amount of the newest shipment of marijuana from up north.

—

.

.

.

.

.

At seventeen, Sakura was nearly killed. It involved the man she had been pleasing, her fist, a staircase, and two chairs. She broke three bones in her hand, a rib, and knocked one of her molars loose.

Sasuke was never informed of the details.

When she woke up in the infirmary, he wasn't there.

—

.

.

.

.

.

At seventeen, Sakura lay in bed, and waited for the clock to strike midnight. Only a few more hours, and she would be an adult—legally, anyways. She had been an adult, really, since the day she had turned thirteen.

That was a long time ago, now, Sakura thought.

She stared at the ceiling.

It was very quiet in the brothel's communal sleeping area—she could barely hear the combined breathing of her cell-mates.

The door slammed open, and angry red light flooded the safe, private quarters. Shrieks of fear screamed through Sakura's ears, and she was up and out of bed, a knife at whoever was at the door's throat, faster than most could even realized she'd moved.

Sakura was not weak.

But holding a knife to her Sasuke's throat was possibly the scariest thing Sakura had ever forced herself to do.

He stared at her. His gaze was level, and despite the chaos that was the rest of the room, Sakura could hear him perfectly.

"I'll keep you safe. I'd die, and kill the whole world to do it, if I had to. I will _not_ let you die."

Sakura didn't remove the knife from his throat. She stared at him, a casual look of mistrust on her features—love was different then trust. "Really?"

"_Yes_," he hissed.

He didn't smell like whiskey, for once, Sakura mused, as he shoved a long, thick cloak around her shoulders, and pulled her out into the night. She didn't know where he was leading her.

Sakura almost thought it was okay.

Any place was better then what she was leaving behind.

Any place at all.

Any time, any where. It was better.

It _had_ to be.

—

.

.

.

.

.

_fin_.


	5. fourteen carat mornings

this is what happens when i'm sick and should be doing my bio homework.**  
disclaimer**: pffft.**  
dedication**: to les. smile for me, babe!**  
notes**: …wtf. why am i even _trying_?

**title**: fourteen carat mornings**  
summary**: Or, _Why Sleeping with Your Best Friend Is A Bad Idea_.Hello, tits-out mistake. It's been a while. Yeah. There's a reason that it's just not done. An aftermath story. — Sasuke/Sakura; o5/1oo.

—

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.

.

.

.

Sakura woke up in an unfamiliar room, her head killing her. Sunlight was filtering through the window, and she winced, a little, as the bright light vigorously attacked her head-ache without remorse.

It was mornings like this that caused Sakura wondered why the hell she was even still friends with the people she called friends (read: Karin and Ino).

Waking up in unfamiliar dorm rooms was not something Sakura was unaccustomed to—with Ino and/or Karin as friends, it had so far happened to most of them; Hinata being the exception, as she was too busy being devoted to a stupid, dense boy who, most of the time, didn't even know she existed. Stupid.

Sakura sat up, and looked around. She suddenly realized—she _did_ recognize this room.

Oh, _damn it_.

Sakura looked down at the person lying next to her.

And decided that as soon as she managed to sneak out of Uchiha Sasuke's bed, she was going to quietly bang her head against the nearest hard surface.

You know, there was a reason best friends didn't sleep together.

It kind of led to complications.

One of them?

Finding her clothes—they, uhm, were kind of scattered everywhere (which totally didn't make sense, given how little she had actually been wearing last night. Where the hell was her bra?). That was currently the only problem that Sakura was dealing with.

She would deal with the other problems later.

(Another one of said problems; how the hell was she supposed to escape Sasuke's dorm-floor without being seen? Because if she was seen, she would therefore be caught. And if she was caught, she could be laughed at. Ino would never let her live it down.

And. Uhm. She may have just slept with her best friend.

That was a very pressing problem, too.

And figuring out exactly how she had ended up in Sasuke's bedroom.

And maybe getting her memory of the previous night back.

Okay, so there were _a lot_ of pressing problems.

_Crap_.)

Sakura carefully untangled the sheets from around her legs, barely moving, barely breathing. _Please, please, please don't let him wake up. I will be so fucked if he wakes up._

Sakura managed to slip out of bed silently, and took a careful mental stock.

There was silver glitter in her hair and hickeys on her neck. Uh-oh.

And things just went down-hill from there.

Her sparkly-sequined black-and-white skirt was on the ground to her right, and stained with what looked like vodka and Kool-Aid. Not surprising. Her strappy stilettos were on opposite sides of the room, and her purse had been left at the door. Her bra was still nowhere to be found, and her tank top had been ripped in half. And her phone? Her phone was peeking out from under Sasuke's pillow.

Well. Shit.

Sakura sighed.

This was going to be one shitty walk of shame.

She carefully snuck around the room, collecting the things that were actually hers, and a few that _weren't_ hers—she _was_ going to need a shirt, and Sasuke could suck it if he thought she wasn't going to steal one of his.

Sakura grabbed the first shirt she could lay her hands on (a bright blue football jersey; really Sakura, could you _be_ anymore obvious?), and she tugged it over her shoulders. She'd find her bra later—she needed to _get the hell out of here_. She shimmied into her stained skirt, and stuffed last night's ripped shirt into her bag.

Getting her phone back was also clearly a priority. It took her ten minutes, but Sakura managed to get it out from under Sasuke's head without the aforementioned boy waking up.

Thankfully, Sakura figured she probably had everything (except her bra. Pfft, she'd probably left it at the bar, or something…)

She slipped her ridiculous stilettos –it was a pity they were so pretty, really; God, Ino was starting to rub off on her, and not in the good way that sparkles did– on to her feet as she was leaving.

Her head was still pounding as she slipped out into the bright sunlight.

She opened her phone, and found a text from herself, clearly sent the last night. Sakura read through it quickly, and groaned.

**From: Sak-ura  
To: Sak-ura  
dear sakura, this is your Dignity txting you. im with hinata's Innocence, and karin's Common Sense. dont be stupid while im gone. kthnxbai.**

This day could actually not get any worse.

Or so she thought.

Ten minutes later, she got a text from Hinata.

**From: Hina-chan  
To: Sak-ura  
Please come get me. I just woke up next to Naruto. HELP. I DON'T KNOW HOW I GOT HERE.**

Sakura groaned again.

So she had totally jinxed it.

Great. Just friggin' great.

—

.

.

.

.

.

Three hours later, Sakura found herself sitting in Ino's living room, a slightly scarred Hinata at her side.

They still had no idea where Karin had ended up (they _hoped_ it was with Suigetsu—if it was, it was likely neither of said people would be heard from for another week, or so), and Tenten was still MIA, as well.

Sakura buried her head in her hands, and _wailed_.

"I _slept_ with _Sasuke_!"

Ino looked grim. "Just be happy you're not preggers or something, Forehead. It could be a _lot_ worse."

Sakura shook her head. "No, it _couldn't_! Ino, I just _had sex_ with my _best friend_! I'll never be able to look at him the same way _again_!"

Hinata, too, shook her head. "I–I… At least y-you don't _r-remember_ it… A-and with N-Naruto-kun–!"

Sakura stopped, and shot a sympathetic glance at Hinata. Ino, too, reached over, and hugged the very shy, still-totally-crushing-on-a-stupid-dense-boy girl.

"It's okay, Hina-chan, we all made stupid mistakes last night. I mean, Piggy over there spent the night macking her ex-boyfriend!"

Ino stuck her nose in the air. "Please, Kiba is not my ex-_boyfriend_. He's a _fuck-buddy_. Totally different story!"

Hinata squeaked, and flailed. Ino despaired.

Sakura could only wail some more.

—

**From: Candii  
To: Sak-ura  
ruin this train wreck of a one-night stand for me by coming to find me, and i WILL kill you, understand?**

Sometimes, Sakura really hated her friends.

—

Sasuke rolled out of bed, and hit the floor.

Stupid fucking sunlight. His head was pounding. Sasuke squinted up at the clock on his bedside, and found that his view of it was pretty much obscured by one of his shirts.

"What the fu–" he muttered groggily, and pulled his shirt away from the clock.

A second garment also came peeling away from his clock.

It was a girl's bra.

What was worse: it was a girl's bra that Sasuke _recognized_. He knew that Sakura loved that stupid strapless, green-white-pink-hearts bra. He'd listened to her rant about how cure it was, often enough.

Sasuke could only stare at it in horror-laced disbelief.

Her bra. His room. Too much alcohol. No memory. That could really only mean one thing.

He may very well have just slept with his best friend.

Oh, Jesus Christ.

—

.

.

.

.

.

Sakura really was waiting for Sasuke to call.

She knew he would.

He was _Sasuke_. It was, like, his _job_. Or something. As her older-brother-protector-person. Yes. That was his job. Title. Thing.

What-_ever_.

Sakura's phone buzzed. Sakura jumped. And then Sakura dove at said phone.

…

Goddamn stupid chicken-shit _Sasuke_…

**From: Too Emo For His Pants  
To: Sak-ura  
why the hell is your bra in my bedroom?**

Sakura could only stare at it.

**From: Sak-ura  
To: Too Emo For His Pants  
yeah, guess what, we need to talk. like. right now. no joke.**

Well.

_This_ was going to be an interesting conversation…

—

Sasuke managed to make it to Sakura's house in three minutes, flat (Sakura timed it; he was so whipped).

She opened the door before he knocked.

And then they just kind of looked at each other awkwardly.

Sasuke noted the bruises on her throat.

…

That was just goddamn confirmation. Damn it.

Sakura cleared her throat (she was still wearing his shirt—why hadn't she changed out of it, yet?), and said "So. Uhm. Yeah. You should probably come in."

Sasuke inclined his head, and stepped through the threshold of the door way.

Why did it feel like he was headed for his own doom?

Sasuke wasn't really all that sure.

But, either way. He shot a glance at his best friend (Naruto? Pfft, _no one_ considered _Naruto_ their best friend—or, at least, no one _sane_ did), just as she was shooting a glance at him. Their eyes met for half a second, and then they both looked away, dark red making its way up Sakura's face.

Honestly, Sasuke didn't even _want_ to know what he looked like. It was probably bad.

Unconsciously, they both headed straight for the kitchen. It was the room with the fewest breakable. Clearly, that was important in this conversation.

Sakura sat down at her kitchen, tucked her hair behind her ear, sighed, and opened her mouth to say something.

Sasuke cut her off. "Did we sleep together?"

Sakura's reply was short; clipped. "Probably."

"…Hn."

"…"

"…"

"…"

"…"

After another few minutes of silence, Sakura lost it. "ASDFGHJKL, DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT I'VE BEEN THROUGH THE LAST FEW HOURS?"

Sasuke just stared at her. "Sakura, calm down."

Sakura looked scandalized, her green eyes widening to infinite proportions. "ME? CALM DOWN? I _AM_ CALM, UCHIHA SASUKE, _GIVEN THE SITUATION_!"

Sasuke groaned, and rubbed his temples. His hangover headache still hadn't gone away. He gritted his teeth, and said "Sakura, shut up."

Somehow, this statement did not endear him at all to Sakura.

Actually, it was probably the worst thing he could have said.

(Uhm, can anyone say "Idiot"?)

It went very, very silent. Sasuke looked up, and saw steam pouring out of Sakura's ears. He winced. The explosion that was building up was not going to be pleasant. Sasuke figured he ought to do something so that she imploded, not exploded; it would make his life easier.

"So we slept together. Calm down, Sakura. People saw this coming."

Sakura continued to steam. "OH? _WHO_ SAW THIS COMING, PRAY TELL, OH, MY GREAT LORD AND MASTER?"

Sasuke rubbed his temples again. "Everyone. Sakura, please. Volume down."

Sakura could only _seethe_.

But she did turn her volume down. There was no need to cause him unnecessary pain.

"So what do we do, if you're clearly so prepared for something like this happening, Sasuke? Because, uh, hi? Things like this? They're _not supposed to happen_."

Sasuke glared at her. "We pretend it never happened."

Sakura blinked.

And blinked.

And blinked.

"_Oh_."

"Hn. _Oh_."

"Oh. Okay. We can do that."

"Hn."

"…"

"…"

"So, what now?"

"…Coffee?"

"Sure, that sounds good."

"…Sakura, put some clothes on. I want my shirt back."

"OH. RIGHT."

Ten minutes later, Sakura sent a text out.

**From: Sak-ura  
To: Candii; Hina-chan; Piggy; Machete  
so. uh. i'm dating Sasuke. i think. NOT A WORD, PIGGY.**

—

.

.

.

.

.

_fin._

**notes2**: …I AM NOT COMING BACK. BLAME LES. BLAME HER.


	6. live wire

**disclaimer**: i wish.**  
dedication**: to les, for being my partner in crime late at night**  
notes**: sleep? who needs sleep? psh, your mom needs sleep.**  
notes2**: "That's how I define our friendship. You're scarily logical, and I'm the one who commits crimes!" — saraa to eleni.

**title**: live wire**  
summary**: Dancing in between the lethal electric, quick-whipping live wires; it was a talent she was known for, a talent she was usually on the run for. — Sasuke/Sakura; o6/5o.

—

.

.

.

.

.

A cigarette dangled from Sakura's lips, the very tip burning charcoal red. It was the only flicker of light in the dingy hotel room; dark curtains blocked out most of the fake-light from the day outside.

"Your parents can't stand me," she told the man sitting in a chair across the room, a spiteful smile making its way into her words. She was the embodiment of everything the Uchiha family hated about themselves—of course they hated her.

And she liked them even less then they liked her. That was saying something.

"Hn," he grumbled.

"I would tell you to go back… but in good conscience, I can't. Sorry."

"Hn."

Sakura stood, and stretched, slashed black tank stretching tight across her torso, exposing skin that rarely saw true sunlight. Unnatural pink hair was swiftly put up into a knot at the top of her head, and Sakura's green eyes were sharp.

"I've got Topside patrol in twenty. You coming?" she asked.

"No," he muttered.

Sakura shrugged, and headed towards the door, combat boots thudding dully against the cross-foam of the floor.

"Sakura."

"Hm?" she asked.

"Take… _something_ with you. It's not safe up there."

Sakura rolled her eyes, and held up her hand. The pale blue scalpels that were melded into her skin, just below her nails, glinted in the dim light. "Don't start, Sasuke-kun. I grew up out there, I'll be perfectly fine. I know the areas to avoid, and it's not like I'm unarmed."

She turned back towards the door. She heard him grumble and complain to himself for another ten seconds, and then he had shot up off the couch, and was standing next to her. His black hair cloaked most of his facial expressions, and right at the moment, he was scowling like nothing else, sparks of red fire in his eyes; and Sakura knew him too well.

She smiled.

"I knew you couldn't resist."

—

Running the cables was one of the easiest things Sakura had ever done.

Dancing in between the lethal electric, quick-whipping live wires; it was a talent she was known for, a talent she was usually on the run for. It made getting topside patrol so much more fun.

Sakura scaled up the elevator shaft like she was born doing it. Her fingers caught in the gridded walls, binary information flowing through the walls at a rate that few could process—Sakura, herself, didn't have the software installed.

Sasuke was behind her, a few feet below. She looked down at him, and called, mischief incarnate "C'mon, Sasuke-kun! Five minutes! You're being _slow_!"

Sasuke was probably rolling his eyes, and figuring out a way to get out ahead of her. Sakura knew he hated when she went topside without him.

The cables whizzed and hissed, violence and energy personified as the two scrambled up the scaffolding. The two slid past the videotape-cameras, watching the cable-cars passively.

No one thought anyone was stupid enough to run the cables, anyways.

So the Feds didn't watch the walls.

(No one thought anyone was stupid enough to go Topside, either; but then, Sakura had never been the most conventionally intelligent person in the world.)

Sakura continued to climb. She didn't look down, again; she knew that if she did, she would only think about how far it was the to the bottom of the cable-shaft. It was not a pleasant thought.

Her gloved fingers skimmed the edges of the consciousness of the structure of the world, coming away leaden with the remnants of ice-blue glo-dust and smoke. She wrinkled her nose delicately, and hooked herself up onto a sheet-metal platform, Sasuke behind her.

"Two minutes," she told him.

"I know, girl."

Sakura rolled her eyes. Her hands closed around the grimy metal rungs of the ladder that led up to the hatch that went Topside, and she clambered all the way up. She pushed the hatch open, and skidded out into the real-bright sunlight.

Her eyes, so used to the dank darkness of Underland, were unaccustomed to the light, and Sakura shied away, for a moment or two. Then she slipped the dark-goggles that she kept in her equipment pack over her eyes, and felt a little better.

Sasuke came up behind her, and surveyed Topside, distaste clear on his face.

It was the rubble of a million wars, the destruction of every possible facet of humanity.

And Sakura looked completely at home, there.

She picked her way across a picked-clean pile of trash, and stood atop the scattered bits and pieces of a once-machine. She cocked her hip, and gave him a very bored look. "You coming?"

Sasuke said nothing, and shook his head.

Sakura smiled. "Sure, you aren't. And my hair's not pink. C'mon."

Sasuke sighed, and followed her small form over the wreckage.

—

Six hours later, neither of them would be in the condition to deal with anyone else, mentally. There were two children—two children without parents, both with terrified eyes, and hallowed cheeks, rags and bones.

Sakura bit through her lip trying to get them to trust her enough to get them back to the safety of Underland.

Six hours.

Topside tended to do that to people.

—

It was easy to get lost in light and music and pounding beats, Sakura knew.

Easy.

Escapist.

_Extremist_.

Swing, swing.

Arms in the air, shimmer-ink up and down her arms, her throat, finger smeared across her face, her lips, painted like freedom. Flashes of curved scalpel beneath skin, sparkle, sparkle in coloured light. So many bodies pressed in around her, (_closer, closer, please_), hands on her hips, rolling and hissing, and it was dancing with cables all over again. Different environment, but the energy, the energy was the same (_too close, too close_).

Sakura wondered if Sasuke was watching.

Probably not.

He never ended up down in the Pits, not the way Sakura did. Dance off the dirt, dance it off, dance! Dance your soul away, girl. Dance!

It was nights like this that made Sakura wonder why she ever went Topside.

It would be so easy to live in the lines that defined society.

So easy.

Swing, swing.

—

"You're so annoying."

She half-shrugged. "Yeah, yeah, I know. 'The Pits are too dangerous', blah, blah, blah. You've told me that a million times, Sasuke-kun. An' it doesn't change anything. Remember? According to you, _everything_ is too dangerous."

She paused, and a dangerous smile carved its way onto her face.

"And you act like I can't take care of myself. I hate that, you know."

She walked two steps towards, still smiling, even as her hand blurred down his shirt, slicing it cleanly in two. Sasuke didn't even flinch, and surveyed the shredded fabric with distaste.

He frowned down at her. "You're going to be the death of me."

Sakura laughed, then, a ringtone in the dark.

"I know."

—

"What are you doing?"

"Why so monotone, Sasuke-kun? Also, I'm obviously doing nothing that will endear me to you." Shuffle, shuffle.

"…Hn."

"Yeah, that's what I thought. I need to find Karin, seen her recently?"

"Not since–"

"You think I don't know that? It's been three weeks."

"You – are you – you _idiot_." Strain in his voice.

A sigh. "You're acting like I'm not coming back, again. I always come back. _Always_."

"…"

"I'm here now, right?"

"_Hn_."

"Don't give me that shit-eating look of yours. That only works on Naruto, stupid. I'm not Naruto."

"…"

"…"

"…"

"Your parents still can't stand me. They just – I dunno, don't like me. It's not going to work. It's probably better if, you know–"

"Don't _say_ that, girl."

"…Lemme go, Sasuke-kun. She's practically my sister. I need to find her. Come if you want, but _don't_ try to stop me."

"Do I have a choice?"

"Have I ever forced you to do _anything_, Sasuke? _Ever_? We both know that I couldn't. Not even if I tried."

"…"

"…"

"…Hn. _Fine_."

Laughter, again. "You are _so_ predictable."

—

Arms around her waist, Sakura held the hole in her stomach. Too fast, too much, just another Topside patrol.

"_Shit_," she coughed, and dark wetness bloomed on her skin.

"God, you're stupid, girl," Sasuke hissed. He grabbed her arm, and forced an injection of epi-med into her. Sakura hissed as the drug-of-choice swirled through her veins, numbed the pain, stopped the bleeding, started the re-growth of damaged cells.

"I hate you, sometimes," she muttered to him.

And then she was up, lovely scalpel-hands tearing through the ropes that kept Topside standing.

She entirely missed his soft "I know you do."

—

Back in the dingy hotel room, Sakura washed Topside grit and blood out of her hair in the kitchen sink, tap running a water substitute over her skull.

Sasuke was standing at the window, facing away, when she walked out of the kitchen, towel rubbing away the last of the wetness in her hair. There was a cigarette between her lips, again.

"You were right," he muttered to her, muscles taught, voice strained again.

"Hm?" Sakura murmured.

"You were right," he said again.

Sakura yawned. "What about?"

"We should stop."

"Stop what?"

"This."

The silence stretched forever. Sakura simply stared at Sasuke, contemplative. Part of her –yes, part of her, a part she didn't necessarily like, but it was still a part of her– had seen this coming.

But it still… sort of… _hurt_.

"I never took you for a coward, Sasuke-kun."

Sakura knew he hated being called a coward; it reminded him of his older brother. If there was one thing Uchiha Sasuke hated, it was being reminded of his older brother. She watched him stiffen, and then he whipped around to stare at her, angry fire in his eyes.

"What do you _want_ from me, Sakura?"

Sakura's head spun. "I don't _know_, okay?"

He strode over, jaw still clenched, muscles still strained, and loomed over her. Stared at her. Sakura stared back; this had been so long in coming; she'd always known it would.

Sasuke's voice almost shook. "You make me… _so crazy_, girl."

Sakura had the audacity to smile at him, all unnatural colours, glinting metal, and sharp angles in the dim light. "I try."

"Hn," he grunted.

They stayed like that for a moment, almost pressed close together. Sakura groaned, nails on chalkboard, and fisted her lovely-scalpel hands in his shirt.

"You," she murmured, "Are stupider then _me_."

The cigarette dropped to the floor, the tip burning red.

—

.

.

.

.

.

_fin_.


	7. lost in translation

**disclaimer**: ha. ha. very, very funny.**  
dedication**: to Alyssa. you so know why, too. FREAKIN' MEXICO, WTF.**  
notes**: so i've decided i dislike capitalization.**  
notes2**: i do not like the way this is going. seriously, wtf.**  
notes3**: look at the girl who can't write canon! point&laugh, POINT&LAUGH!

**title**: lost in translation**  
summary**: Do you remember when I used to be in love with you? Do you remember what that was like? — Sasuke/Sakura; o7/5o.

—

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.

.

.

.

Being ANBU was never an easy part of anyone's life. That was the first thing Bird learned.

Under a slick uniform and a nameless bird's mask, there was no task too dirty, no problem too soul-scarring. There were no lows that ANBU wouldn't go to, to complete a mission. That was the second thing Bird learned.

The third thing that Bird learned was that the first mission any ANBU was given, as initiation, was the one mission that would tear them apart, physically, and, more importantly, emotionally. It was the one mission they were expected to fail; the _only_ mission they were expected to fail. The failure was a test in itself, Bird supposed.

Bird hated remembering her first mission. That was why she didn't do it too often.

That first mission… Bird was never going to forget it. It, or the blood spilled. She would never forget either of them.

Bird gritted her teeth underneath the porcelain mask, and once again prayed her thanks that ANBU was so damn anonymous. Pffft, plenty of people had pink hair, right? Right.

Due to said large (exponentially large; Bird understood exponentials, understood the way they built and built upon themselves until they were so large they were incomprehensible) number of pink-haired people in the world, Bird knew that there was _obviously_ no way that that-stupid-asshole-who-really-needed-to-be-punched-in-the-face would know it was her.

Bird quietly mused that Naruto was probably going to be pretty pissed when he found out that Tsunade and the elders had kept him back, kept him busy training, rather then send him on the mission that Bird, invariably, was currently on.

Stupid life.

Stupid ANBU.

Stupid _Sasuke_.

(Bird vaguely thought that her priorities were pretty fucked up. Then again, she killed people who pissed her village and her Hokage off for a living. If that wasn't fucked up, what was?)

The still-scarcely-out-of-childhood ANBU was running through the trees, feet barely touching the branches she was using to keep herself from actually walking on the ground, entirely on autopilot. Her body knew the rhythm well enough that it took less then no thought to skip away from any sense of familiar chakra—there were always nin on patrol. It wouldn't do to _really_ tick someone off, and then have to deal with the repercussion later on. That would just suck.

She was far away from Konoha borders, now, Bird knew. She really, really hated assassination missions. They were _so boring_.

Bird swung herself down to one of the lower braches of the tree she was standing in. She hid herself carefully, concealing her standard white-on-black ANBU uniform amongst the foliage.

From this position, blended in with the leaves that named her village, albeit in very different context, the kunoichi beneath Bird's mask (they called her Sakura when that mask was off) stared out at the empty landscape.

There was only one question that lingered in Bird's mind. How to go about slicing open the target's (read: evil rapist creep) throat, _without_ getting caught? Bird hated assassination missions, because not only were they _boring_, ninety-nine per cent of the time, they were so damn _degrading_.

Of course, "assassination" didn't _necessarily_ mean "seduction".

But that was usually what it boiled down to. A target that was drunk on desire and alcohol was a target that simply wasn't thinking straight. Therefore, a target who wasn't thinking straight was a target that was that much easier to off.

Bird sighed. Muttered ungratefully. Hissed at nothing in particular. Sighed again.

She still had an easy two days of travel. Bird knew she could make it in a single day, before the sun dipped below the horizon, if she pushed hard enough.

But Bird had studied her target for an entire week before going after him—Bird was a meticulous girl. Half-assing things had never been in her nature. She knew her target's habits and his patterns as well as she knew her own name.

She knew her target as well as she knew her best friends. She knew his type as well as she knew Naruto. Maybe even as well as she knew—no, not Sasuke. Naruto, but not Sasuke.

Bird took off again, after resting only a moment.

(And she tired not to think about the fact that maybe she didn't know her target so well, after all.)

—

Bird's mask was off, and Haruno Sakura was comfortable on top of the inn she was planning on staying at, that night. She hadn't pulled up the henge, yet; she would, later.

But for now, she simply wanted to sit, and stare at the stars.

She wasn't even tired, and it was cool out—calm. Sakura knew that she ought to be on her way. It never did to keep a mission waiting, but this was different. Sakura was early, and she just needed to… stop.

But ANBU didn't stop, and the stars were far away. Had she been five years younger, they would have been beautiful. But Sakura was far too cynical to ever think such romantic things about little pinpricks of luminescence, millions and millions of light years away.

It had been a long, long time since Sakura had been that romantic.

And, honestly.

There was no such thing as romance for a girl who killed other people to keep herself alive.

—

Bird swung the bloodied kunai around her finger, the porcelain mask across her face hiding her disgust.

Maybe that was what those masks were for—to keep the emotions out of it. With that porcelain barrier between the kunoichi and the world, things were so much more impersonal.

And, relatively, death took a much smaller toll.

Bird knew that that was why ANBU still existed—it was so much less mentally scarring, on all involved. It was even less scarring on the targets, because death always looked the same, and they knew what to expect.

And Bird liked the fact that never got to see her face. They didn't die hating Haruno Sakura—they died hating Bird.

And given that they were two different girls, in Bird's mind, it made her life much easier.

Bird wiped the sullied kunai on the white sheets, leaving a streak of red that matched the red that was still oozing out of the target's cut jugular.

Bird wrinkled her nose, and shot out the window. There was really no need to stay, not now. She would have to send a message back to headquarters, to let them know that yet another mission was a success, and that Naruto could stop worrying now—Hinata's pregnancy didn't need Naruto worrying as much as he was bound to.

She looked out the window for a minute, a dead man on the ground behind her. Bird realized there were better places to send a message, then from the scene of a murder.

She silent scoffed, and skipped out the window.

—

Sakura cursed her luck.

Of _course_ Sasuke would be in the village she was in, one of the _few_ times she had a solo mission, when Naruto wasn't around to save her from herself, when she was emotionally exhausted, and when it was _raining_. To make a horribly cliché statement, things _really_ couldn't get worse.

Honestly, what were the chances of this situation even _happening_?

Slim to _none_.

Sakura groaned.

She should have kept that stupid mask on. Bird could have dealt with Stupid Sasuke better then Sakura ever could have. It was just the way things were—under ANBU's anonymity, Bird could say and do what she wanted, when she wanted.

When Sakura was just Sakura, the line between enemy and love-of-her-life blurred, and suddenly, Sasuke wasn't Stupid and Mean and Horrible anymore… he was just Sasuke, and she was just Sakura.

And what Sakura did best when it came to Sasuke was make stupid decisions.

That's what she did best, when it came to him; make really, really stupid decisions. She could have balked, and booked it the hell away. But she didn't.

Oh, no, she had to _yell_ at him.

Sakura wanted to stop, and bang her overly-large forehead against one of the trees. Really, could she have _done_ anything stupider? (A voice in her head who sounded suspiciously like Ino muttered "Yes, actually, you could have. You could have taken my advice and _jumped him_!")

He was going to kill her.

Sakura knew that. She had known it from the second their eyes had met, Sakura's face bare in the middle of the market, ANBU uniform packed tightly away, bird mask hidden beneath the uniform.

There had been a moment of recognition, and then… _boom_. She's laughed his name, and had taken off.

And now he was going to kill her.

It didn't even really terrify Sakura. The thought of death should have scared her, but it didn't. It was him, it was always him; she didn't really want to die by anyone else's hands. She also knew that no one else had the talent to kill her; she wouldn't _let_ them kill her.

Because it was always, always Sasuke. Always.

It was Romeo and Juliet, Sakura mused. Chasing after someone who had loved you, once. It was _very_ Romeo and Juliet; star-crossed lovers and all that.

But, now, Romeo was a fratricidal maniac, and Juliet wasn't a helpless little thirteen-year-old.

The air was knocked out of her lungs as she was slammed against a tree-trunk. Sakura clenched her teeth, and gasped to draw air. The bastard had winded her.

For the first time in a long time, Sakura looked up at Sasuke, and simply stared at him. He was going to kill her—slit her throat exactly the way she had just slitted her own target's throat. Well, was _that_ karmic, or what? At least Konoha would know something had gone wrong; she'd never gotten that note out… She'd be MIA, not missing nin.

Unlike the person in front of her.

_Stupid_ Sasuke.

(And her priorities were still pretty fucked up. She wasn't even going to deny it.)

"Hello, Sasuke-kun."

His hand was curled around her throat. He was keeping her pinned to the tree-trunk, the asshole. It wasn't tight; Sakura could breathe… but still. It was rude. And he was staring at her. Asshole.

"Sakura."

"Let me go," and her voice sounded much more confident then she felt. Sakura hated her weakness for him, just a little. She wanted this to be over; she wanted it all to be over.

"Hn."

Sakura rolled her eyes. "Or don't. Just make the whole death-thing quick, okay?"

He didn't even look puzzled. He just looked cold. Like always. Sakura knew that he knew that she knew that he was going to kill her.

She didn't even really want him to come home, anymore.

Konoha hadn't been his home for ten years, and that wasn't going to change.

She sighed, sagging against the tree-trunk, all the fight leaving her body. There hadn't been much to begin with, but… there had been _some_.

Sakura wanted to die looking at him. It was only fair. She just wanted—well, there were a lot of things she wanted. But more then anything, she wanted to get to him. She wanted to get to him, _just once_.

"Do you remember what love is, Sasuke-kun?"

She felt him stiffen.

So he did, then. Sakura had wondered, honestly, if he actually remembered what it was like to feel _love_ for someone else.

"Do you remember when I used to be in love with you? Do you remember what that was like?"

He simply stayed stiff against her, pressed too-too close. His hand was still around her throat.

Sakura smiled wistfully. "That was a long time ago, though, wasn't it? I'm sorry, I'm not making this easy for you, but then, I don't really want to die."

She watched his jaw clench, satisfaction running through her entire being. She _wanted_ him to _hate_ her for the rest of eternity. Sasuke wasn't the kind of person to regret things, but she wanted—she _wanted_ him to regret ever _knowing_ her.

"You're so stupid, Sasuke-kun. So, so stupid. You think you know things, and you don't. You're just—"

"Shut _up_," he hissed at her, Sharingan spinning to life in his eyes. Sakura wanted to smile. She had forgotten how easy it was to rile him up.

And he thought he was so aloof.

"No, Sasuke-kun. Why should I shut up about something like this? You're going to kill me anyways, I might as well—"

Sasuke covered her mouth with his left hand, his fingers large and imposing over her lips. His right was still wrapped around her throat.

And Sasuke was starting to lose his cool.

Sakura smiled, tilted her head back, and pressed her lips against the palm of his hand. It was almost a kiss.

Sasuke looked scandalized.

"What are you _doing_?" he snarled, Sharingan spin-spin-spinning, expression wild and crazy.

Sakura honestly wondered whether she was getting out of this alive or not. As she was pretty certain it was leaning towards the "not" side, she figured she might as well have _thoroughly_ earned her own death.

The roseate girl shrugged, slightly, careful of his hand on her windpipe, and said "Pissing you off."

Sasuke _glared_ down at her.

Sakura mildly thought that she hadn't seen a glare like that in a long time. No one had anything on Uchiha Sasuke's death glares; not even Neji, and that was saying something. She sighed.

"You know, Sasuke-kun… I think I pity you."

The glare faded, and he looked a little puzzled. So she had his attention, for once. How long would it last, this time? How long would he actually pay attention _just_ to her?

"No… I _know_ I pity you. Even after you kill me, there _will_ be people who miss me. I know that. But, honestly, Sasuke-kun… will _anyone_ miss you? Anyone at all?"

His hold on her throat tightened. Sakura had expected that. Not long, now…

They stood there for another minute. Sakura wanted to tell him to stop his goddamn stalling; he was delaying the inevitable, and that was silly.

Sakura was almost ready for this. She kind of hated him for the fact that he was so close, and there was no visible effect on him.

But then, with Sasuke, it was always the underneath the underneath that mattered.

"If you're not going to kill me, just lemme go, and we'll forget this whole episode ever happened. I'll go get drunk with Ino and Tenten, or something, okay?"

Sasuke just glared at her, some more.

Stupid Sasuke.

Her voice was soft, when she said "Please, Sasuke. I'm just… tired. I'm sick of playing games, with you. Please."

She wasn't sure what that would accomplish; maybe he'd let her go, or maybe not, but Sakura was never really sure. She was always so very, very weak, when it came to Sasuke.

And she didn't even have her goddamn mask.

That was when Sakura decided that she was going to make him _regret_ ever making her sad. Stupid asshole.

His hand was still on her throat.

Sakura really hated it when people stalled. She had things to do. She was almost tempted to pull his hand off, and piss him off just enough that he would _end_ this stupid game of cat and mouse that they'd been playing for so damn long.

Sakura had never liked games, anyways.

He was so, so close. Sasuke's nose was inches from Sakura's. If he kissed her, Sakura was just going to have a bitch fit–

Oh. Well.

Sakura sighed, and mumbled something intelligible. Sasuke's mouth was slanted over hers, possessive and angry and _dominating_.

Stupid life.

Stupid ANBU.

Stupid _Sasuke_.

There only one other question on Sakura's mind as instinct almost took over; how to get out of this situation? She hoped he was concentrating on the fact that, oh, they were practically making out against a tree. She hoped it would be enough to distract him.

She slid her thumb nail into the flesh of his wrist, dug it in, and smiled a vicious smile against his lips.

"Let me go, Sasuke, if you know what's good for you. You just missed your chance to get rid of me for good."

She pulled away, and got a good look at him. There was almost shock on his face. Inner Sakura was _cheering_. Neither of them was sure what's it was from—the lack of suffix, or the fact that Haruno Sakura was _actually_ causing Uchiha Sasuke some measure of _pain_.

Sakura hadn't really smiled like that for a long, long time.

—

("_You—idiot girl."_

"_Yeah, I know, Sasuke-kun. You were supposed to kill me, remember? I know, I'm supposed to be dead. You need to learn to be nicer, obviously. Or maybe just not fail at life, so much."_

_Groan._

"_Sasuke-kun, stop. You sound like a dying duck. It's not pleasant."_

"…"

"_Oh, stop choking, you're fine. Get some originality, please, Naruto does that choking thing three times a day. Or actually, he does it every time Hinata's around. My point is that you suck and need to get a life."_

"…_**Hn**__."_

"_Seriously, did you think that just randomly kissing me was going to make me love you again, or something?"_

"_It __**worked**__, did it not?"_

"_Shut up, kay-thanks. I still win, because you still sound like a dying duck."_)

—

Bird was never really sure how she ended back in Konoha, with her body entirely intact, dragging Uchiha Sasuke behind her.

Honestly, she didn't even really _want_ to know.

As she lugged her ex-teammate-possible-future-husband towards the Hokage tower, she vaguely thought that Naruto was going to be _really_ pissed.

—

.

.

.

.

.

_fin_.

**notes4**: …i… have no words for myself. i'm so, so sorry for this crap-tastic attempt at… _something_. i don't even know at _what_… it was serious and okay, and then it turned horrible and lame and CRACK AND WTF IS WRONG WITH ME.


	8. the basics of crazy

yeah, i know i'm a masochist. to reiterate: this is now going to be a hundred chapters, and i should probably stop stalling.**  
disclaimer**: yeah, no.**  
dedication**: to lipgloss. my lips hurt. i must find some.**  
notes**: too much star wars + really uncomfortable pillows + late night musing in mexico + time crunch = _this_.

**title**: the basics of crazy**  
summary**: Because Real Life is actually a lot like Star Wars. — Sasuke/Sakura. o8/5o.

—

.

.

.

.

.

"Out of all the movies you could have picked, Sakura…"

"Shut up, I like Stars Wars, okay? Anyways, we're already half-way through this one, and there's only three more, that I actually like."

"You are _insane_."

"I could have made this a chick-flick marathon, but I didn't. If I were you, Sasuke-kun, I would shut up."

"Hn."

"That's what I thought."

"…"

"…"

"…"

"You know, Sasuke-kun, our lives are actually a lot like this whole series, if you think about it."

"Hn?"

"I mean, just _think_ about it! It's an adventure about growing up! And lightsabers, but whatever. There's darkness, hope, a lot of anger, and cool people die. I can _not_ be the only person to have made this connection!"

"…"

"Stop staring at me like you don't know what I'm talking about, Sasuke-kun. It's uncomfy-making."

"Stop paraphrasing the Uglies series."

"Then stop being lame and suckish and _agree_ with me! Also, how did you know that I was quoting the Uglies series? Because it's kind of gay."

"I _read_, Sakura. We've been over this."

"You still are suckish and _lame_."

"And you are childish. Be quiet, and watch the movie."

"…"

"…"

"Would Tsunade-shishou be Yoda? Or would that be Sarutobi-sama? Because then, that would make shishou Mace Windu. Sort of. Maybe. I don't know."

"Hn."

"I told you that I don't know, silly. But, huh, I think Naruto would definitely be Luke."

_Snort_.

Pursed lips. "Don't laugh, Sasuke-kun! It's true, Naruto _would_ be Luke! He's got the happy-go-lucky thing going for him, he can light up a room, and he has this ability to make people hope for him, and root for him. And stuff."

"Very scientific, Sakura."

"I totally am scientific. I'm also more diplomatic then you and Naruto and Kakashi-sensei _combined_. Don't look at me like that, you know it's true."

"…_Hn_."

"To know me is to love me, Sasuke-kun. So, if Naruto's Luke, and Tsunade-shishou is Mace Windu, then Kakashi-sensei would be… uhn…"

"Kenobi."

"Ha! I _told_ you, you'd eventually end up agreeing with me! Or, at least, bowing to my demands. Good call on Obi-Wan, actually… Wouldn't that make you Anakin, then?"

"You said no such thing. I would _not_ be Vader."

"Yes, I did, and yes, you would!"

"_How_?"

"Well… You're exceedingly talented at everything you do, you have family issues–"

"My brother is not an 'issue', Sakura."

"He is, too. And you mother issues. So, family issues as a whole. And you hate being held back; you hate being told what to do; you hate being told your wrong, _even when you obviously are_; not to mention your over-all attractiveness; and then there's… there's a part of you that's… somehow… I don't know, _dark_."

"…"

"…"

"That would make you Padmé."

"And _that_ would mean that, not only do I die in childbirth, _Naruto_ would be our child."

"_No_, Sakura."

"Stop choking. Much as I adore you, Sasuke-kun, I don't think your family could stand the indignity of kid like Naruto. Your mom might be okay, but your father would have a heart attack. And Itachi would never let you live it down."

"_HN_."

"So maybe we better use a different character comparison. Or we're _all_ in trouble."

"_Anything_ is better then being compared to Vader."

"I still think it fits."

"You would."

"Gah, Sasuke-kun, you _know_ it fits!"

"Does not."

"_Now_ who's childish, hm, Sasuke-kun?"

"Sakura, Vader let Padmé die because he was too stubborn to ask for Kenobi's help. I wouldn't let that happen. Not to you."

"Sasuke-kun, that was Anakin's whole _problem_! He was so afraid of losing Padmé that it ended up coming back to bite him in the butt! He didn't trust in the Force, and it fucked him over, and she _died_! And if that's not karma, what _is_?"

"Hn."

"I mean, if he had just told Obi-Wan in the first place, _none_ of it would have happened! Sure, Anakin might have been exiled from the Order, and Padmé might have been thrown out of the Senate, but– _GAH, WHY DIDN'T MACE WINDU JUST KILL PALPATINE WHEN HE HAD THE CHANCE? BAH._"

"… I can not believe we're seriously having this conversation."

"Oh, hush, Sasuke-kun, we're at the wedding, and it's my favourite part of this whole movie!

"…"

"…"

"…"

"Anyways, if you're not Anakin… who _would_ you be?"

"No one."

"You have to be someone, Sasuke-kun. Well, if Naruto is Luke, that would probably make you Han Solo, I guess… The asshole, greedy best friend. …Actually, it _also_ kind of fits!"

"That makes even less sense, Sakura."

"Apfft, you're lying to yourself, Sasuke-kun."

"I'm not. You're annoying."

"Annoying or not, Leia could still kick Han's ass to the next planetary system if she so chooses, and if she thinks he deserves it because he pissed her off."

"Who says you're Leia, Sakura?"

"Who says I'm _not_ Leia, Sasuke-kun?"

"Hn."

"You really need to expand your vocabulary. Like, big time. Put the first original movie in, I hate The Revenge of the Sith, it makes me cry."

"I don't understand you."

"Sasuke-kun, if men understood how females mind's worked, they would explode. So it's nothing new. That would be Ino not shopping, or something, you know? The world would explode."

"…"

"…"

"…"

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, Sasuke-kun."

"Just shut up and watch the movie, Sakura."

"You're mean."

"Hn."

"To reiterate: you suck."

"_Hn_."

"…"

"…"

"Hey, Sasuke-kun, Star Wars has a happy ending, right?"

"Uhn."

"Oh. Okay. That's good."

—

.

.

.

.

.

_fin._

**notes2**: so i suck at ending things. whatever. blah.


	9. dead zone

i need to find a find to get the rabbits in my head to stop fucking around / procreating / creating more of themselves. it's bothersome.  
**disclaimer**: ha, as if.  
**dedication**: to jimmy eat world & the killers. love, forever and always.  
**notes**: set before "live wire". it's a prequel? sort of? i dunno.  
**notes2**: so there's something wrong with me—i like this world way more then i should. and cigarettes, in general, are a very versatile object, despite how much they disgust me.

**title**: dead zone**  
summary**: Pierced tongue out in a crazy grimace, metal and rot screaming lust in her smile, Sasuke knew that Sakura was definitely a differently girl then a year ago. — Sasuke/Sakura; o9/5o.

—

.

.

.

.

.

There were differences, between children born Underlander, and those born Topside. Everyone knew it, everyone. Those born Topside had a certain look about them, and carried themselves a certain way. They were the wild- ones, the ones always on the wrong side of the law, the dangerous ones, even. The feral ones, even.

Sakura was born Topside.

People said they saw her heritage in her bright green eyes, in her unnatural pink hair—she was a girl part of the last generation of Topside's failed genetic engineering. She was part of a dying breed of once super-humans.

But that time was long ago, lost to the mists of time, and the Underlanders know not to return to that then, to that time period when the only thing that mattered was the advancement of the human race. The Underlands know better, now.

Sakura does not have siblings. She was Topside-retrieved (that's what they called it, these days), aged five, and placed, first, with the strict Hyuuga family. She only made a single friend, the quiet-eyed, soft-spoken oldest daughter of the family.

It was not a good placement. Sakura refused to laws set down for her, but she was mostly tolerated.

And then she gouged a scalpeled design (her name, SA-KU-RA; she just wanted someone to _remember_ that she had _existed_) into one of the Hyuuga's ceremonial podiums, and was moved to a different home.

Sakura's life continued in this vein for some time. Those years, even now, blur into each other. The Feds couldn't control the topside in her; every time they tried, someone usually ended up getting hurt.

It usually wasn't Sakura.

They always took that into account.

So they moved her again and again and again.

When she was thirteen, Sakura was given to the Uchiha family—a pet, perhaps, her exotic colouring little more then a passing for most. Topside children were not usually looked upon with any degree of genuine _like_.

And the Uchiha family was only ever cruel, at best.

—

(**three years later**)

There she was, close to an open window, staring out at the holocron moon that was superimposed on Underland's dark roof from a gloomy, empty room.

Sakura, three years older then when they'd first met, was dressed in a comfortable-looking pair of dark-to-cover-the-stains-of-the-illegal leggings and a loose pale yellow zip vest-with-a-hood, scalpels under her fingers, dangerous in their effectiveness. An unlit cigarette between her lips, the Topside female looked more like a TRF fighter (TRF: Topside Rebellion Front; the dark corners of Underland's collective psyche, the vestiges of Topside's pride), then the prized only girl child of Uchiha Fugaku and Mikoto.

(_"Sakura-chan is cable-running, again."_

"_Hn."_

"_It's dangerous, you know. She might get killed."_

"_Hn."_

"…_Sasuke-chan, look after her, won't you?"_)

She turned, and raised an eyebrow at the boy she had been told to called "brother" for the past three years.

"What'cha want?"

He grunted, and glared at her. Sakura didn't care enough even to ask what that meant. She pulled her shaggychoppedragged hair out of her eyes for a moment, and she knew that he caught her fairy-green glare. He knew that she didn't care that he knew where she was.

She took the unlit cigarette away from her lips.

"I'm leaving. I won't –can't– stay in that place any longer. Your perfect family doesn't need something like me around."

He stared at her.

She didn't even wait for his answer. It had been a very long time since she had cared what he thought about her, if she had ever cared what he thought, even once. Sasuke watched her slip the cigarette back into her mouth, pull a lighter out of her pocket. She flicked it, and a light flared violently to life.

Sakura took a single long drag from the lit cigarette, and took two steps towards the window.

"I didn't know you smoked," he muttered at her.

The image of the fake-moon left barely enough light to see by, but Sasuke was Underlander. Seeing in the dark was part of the job description.

Sakura's form was turned away him, the already-smouldering cigarette back in between in fingertips. She shot him a glance over her shoulder, and blew a perfect, practised ring of smoke in his direction.

"I don't."

Sakura took another step towards the window.

"See ya, Sasuke!"

Sasuke had never seen Sakura move faster then she did then. She was out the window, and skidding down the vertical slope of the wall, hysteric, terrified laughter slipping out of her throat.

He stuck his hands in his pockets, and watched her go. He wasn't willing to follow her.

Not yet, anyways.

—

(**six months earlier**)

Underlander high-class society was something that Sakura had never wanted to experience—not that she had much choice. The Uchiha family was practically Underland royalty, and Sakura was, technically, according to the laws, an Uchiha.

And so high-society, it was.

Sakura dragged her hands up the length of the mint-bubble-gum green dress that Mikoto's favourite maid had stuffed her into. The silk fell around her body thickly, whispered grace made tangible.

The room was full of glitter-lights, full of people swaying to the fusion orchestra's strange, mechanical music, and it was so full of the fake, the phony, the _false_.

Sakura grimaced.

She had _better_ things to do. And it wasn't like she couldn't hear the whispers that followed her, as she moved through the room.

(_"Mikoto's girl? They say she's dangerous."_

"_No, her?"_

"_Yes."_

"_**Look**__ at her! She's small, delicate—"_

"_She's still Topside. You know how they are. Disgusting little rats."_

"_Ah, I thought—her colouring is very—"_

"_She's still Topside. What do you expect?"_)

Her fists clenched, and Sakura felt the edges of her scalpels bite into the palms of her hands. It wouldn't be the first time she had sliced the skin open, there. It wouldn't be the first time her hands had been chafed raw. Wouldn't be the first time her hands had been soaked with blood.

Sakura gritted her teeth, even as she forced her fingers away from her palms. Mikoto would be most… _displeased_… if Sakura got blood on the ridiculously impractical silk dress she was wearing. Mikoto was the kindliest of Sakura's –albeit unwanted– adopted family, but she was dangerous when angered.

Sakura had learned that well.

The fusion orchestra's music washed over her, synthesized sound resounding dully in her ears. Sakura forced herself to walk from the cringing guests, wrapped her arms around her middle, and willed herself not to vomit.

She didn't want to die, here.

—

(**eighteen months later than six months earlier**)

"You know, Sak, you're lucky you're so damn invaluable. You'd be dead three times over, if you weren't."

Sakura's laugh was quiet. Topside was always quiet. It didn't do, to make noise. If you made noise, you were going to be dead.

It wasn't even a threat. It was just a fact of a Topsider's life.

Sakura tossed her hair back, and looked at the girl sitting next to her. Karin had been her TRF partner, now, for more then half a calendar revolution, and Sakura _almost_ trusted her.

"Karin, what are we—"

The dull roar that cut her off had Karin swearing like a cyberbuccaneer. "Oh, jesus _shit_, Sakura, _get up_!"

The thing that had screamed that roar was probably hungry. And while two girls were nothing much of a meal, Topsiders took what they could get.

Sakura scrambled up. The two bits of genetic brightness stared at each other for a half nano-moment, before they both darted back towards the closest Underland hatch. A terrified scream of laughter tore itself out of one of their throats—neither of them would ever know who from.

Karin skidded down the hatch, and Sakura turned, and watched in sick fascination as the thing that had been chasing them came into view. It was a monster of rust, bubbled flesh, and metal, the results of the radiation that still stained most of Topside's previously urban areas.

"Oh, you beauty, you wonderful, wonderful living being," Sakura breathed, eyes wide in awe.

"YOU'RE GOING TO DIE, GET YOUR ASS BACK IN HERE!" Karin screamed from out of sight, and Sakura came back to herself just as the thing was headed straight towards her, jaws unhinged.

She skipped down the hatch, and swiped her nails across the flimsy strings that kept the hatch open. The thick metal hatch-cap slammed down after her, and cut off the last bit of real sunlight Sakura would see for three weeks.

—

The two girls scampered down the rusty rungs of the ladder, razor-laughter in both of their throats.

"So. Now what? We can't go back up there."

Karin's mirrored glasses glinted in the dimming glo-light.

"We go piss somebody off. What else do rebels do?"

—

Alive and burning fire, Sakura was murder swathed in red lace-black wire-electric green headphones. She liked the high places—anywhere in Underland that was close to the surface, you could find her.

"So you're still breathing."

"Huh, yeah. Freedom's kind of nice. And you're still a prick, what a surprise. How long's it been, Sasuke?"

"Hn."

"I'm up here because I like it. Duh. It's… pretty. I can almost pretend I can see the sky."

Well, the Moors _were_ sort of close to the surface, Sasuke thought with a minute, crooked grin.

And only Sakura would find the decaying, ancident elegance of the Moors _pretty_.

"They want you to come home. Mother misses you."

Sakura snorted. She was sitting there, on the top of the delicate lattice of someone else's dreams, swinging her ratty-sneakered feet over the edge of cracked concrete, a child with tired, knowing eyes.

Sasuke didn't like to be reminded that he'd never seen her face any other way, so he sat down next to her. Underland wasn't a place for children of the sun. Sasuke didn't like knowing that.

"They don't want me home, Sasuke. They don't even _like_ me. And you shouldn't lie, it's bad precedent."

"Mother _does_ miss you."

"I'm better off here. I don't—no one expects things from me, here, Sasuke. I don't have to—to—I don't even know. I can just _be_, and I don't have to feel _sick_ with myself for _being_ me. Get it?"

"Hn."

"I didn't think so."

—

(**two weeks later**)

Sasuke was standing in one of the upper rooms of the Uchiha household, quiet and calm, and watched through a window, politely interested, as chaos reigned in Underland's normally immaculate streets. He could see that girl –that stupid, stupid girl– laughing, exhilaration on her face, as she danced through it all.

Sasuke could almost, _almost_ understand why the Topsiders had wanted to birth themselves into something _better_, at that moment. At that moment, watching Sakura moved like a cat, through the glass of the window, Sasuke could almost understand.

And she _was_ so almost-beautiful, a graceful arc of death, fresh air in a dead zone. Pierced tongue out in a crazy grimace, metal and rot screaming lust in her smile, Sasuke knew that Sakura was definitely a differently girl then a year ago.

Obliteration and furious athleticism; Sasuke would not deny that Sakura did both those things very, very well.

Dancing and destruction. That was all she ever did.

Stupid girl. She was going to die, one of these days. He couldn't have that. She was still too interesting to be allowed to die.

Sasuke felt something in his stomach shift, and went to pack his clothes.

—

.

.

.

.

.

_fin_.

**notes3**: i… _really_ like how this ended. i don't even know why.


	10. summer in a silk skirt

**disclaimer**: nope.  
**dedication**: first, to **sonya **& **les**. because, let's face it, it's always you two. also to the wonderful **Maya-chan2007**, to the equally-wonderful **Just Lovely.** and to the infinitely patient **shycluless**. because you three make my life pretty cool, and i don't really deserve your love.  
**notes**: i deem myself in dire need of something happy. also, because sonya needs cheering up, as well.  
**notes2**: "Are you using your uni acceptance letter as a crumb catcher?" "Yes?" "…You are the _classiest_ girl I've ever met, Sara." — dana to saraa

**title**: summer in a silk skirt**  
summary**: "So I think I'm in love with you. What else is new?" They had another summer. They'd always have another summer. — Sasuke/Sakura. 1o/5o.

—

.

.

.

.

.

—

(daybreak

sunrise

dawn)

**m**_o_rn**i**_ng—and how the sun felt on her face in that quiet, early place._

.

Sakura liked mornings after rain the most.

The sky looked washed robin's-egg-blue, quiet and new, and the sun was bright and warm-but-not-the-furnace-glare-of-noon-yet, and the world… the world seemed a little bit cleaner then it usually did.

It was rare for the world to seem so clean.

The day was blue-yellow-brilliant white-on-the-edges, and Sakura sat on the empty beach, arms wrapped around bare, tan legs. She rested her chin on her knees, and stared at the place on the horizon where water met sky.

The ocean was wide, calm, the same pale-washed colour as the sky, and Sakura felt out of place. She had always been bright colour-in-motion, not quite as calm as this morning, as dead silent as the air.

Sakura lay back against the sand, hands behind her head, and closed her eyes.

She liked summer mornings after night rain the most.

—

(sunshine

brightness

shine)

_d_**ay**li**g**_h_**t**_—and how the "he" and the "she" became the "they"._

.

Summer days tended to blur into each other, mostly, for Sakura.

Heat, sunshine, bare skin, and strangers—boys and girls, made up the days; while water-laughter floated through the air like a half-forgotten memory of a fifties' show tune.

Sakura hummed along with the Beach Boys, and got comfortable by the sea water.

_("My brother's coming up, today."_

"_Nnnghn."_

"_Admit it, you want him. You've wanted him since, like, __**forever**__."_

"_Nngghnn."_

"_Oh, stop __**moaning**__, Sak! Just jump him, already!"_

"_How are we friends, again?"_

"_Because if we weren't, you never get a date. And it's because I'm awesome."_

"_I hate you."_

"_Love ya too, hon.")_

The sand on her right shifted, and Sakura shot a dreamy-sleepy glance up at the one person she hadn't seen in almost a year. It had been a long time.

"Hey, Sasuke."

"The Beach Boys, huh?"

"It's appropriate, don't you think?"

He stared down at her, a faintly amused look on his face. He murmured "Sure."

She looked up at him, again, and tilted her head down. He looked very far away, standing up, and Sakura had to cover her eyes and squint against the sun. Even then, she couldn't see his face. "Sit down?"

She was pretty sure he was almost grinning.

"Sure." He flopped down next to her, boneless grace incarnate, and they sat in the sun together, quiet and calm.

—

(siesta

golden

leisure)

_a_**ft**er**n**_oo_n—_and how the slow drip of alcohol kept them quiet_

.

It was only the soft clink of ice cubes against glass in clear-cold vodka, and pale-cold fingers against the small of her back that kept Sakura awake.

"I like summer," she murmured, her hair in her eyes, pink against green against exposed flesh; the colours of real life smearing in the background.

"Summer's good."

Days like that were always quiet. The shrieks of laughter were far down the shoreline, and Sakura had a vague sense of movement like breathing from the salt-water surge lapping at her feet.

The sky was an abyss of bright-blue-turning-dark, and as Sakura looked far away, to where the line between the two great bodies of blue met and became indistinct from one another.

Maybe there was going to be a storm.

It made her think of Sasuke in the dark, firelight flickers and s'mores, and the lazy twining of fingers through a haze of pale blue smoke.

But that had never happened, and Sakura was just dreaming.

She shot a slow glance at Sasuke, and caught him glancing back.

Sakura smiled, and looped her pinky finger around his.

He didn't move away, and that was okay.

They had all summer.

—

(sundown

twilight

dusk)

**e**_ve_ni_n_**g**—_and how the crimson light from the sunset washed over them, tainting everything beautiful_

.

Her head was resting on her knees, arms curled around her legs, and she was looking at him again. She did that a lot—just looked at him, that is.

She looked at him, and Sasuke would almost squirm because he felt like she was looking right through him, and that made his stomach churn.

She didn't look like the girl he had grown up with, when she looked at him like that.

"Sakura."

She tilted her head at him, tangible innocence, and smiled slightly. The setting sun blazed across her skin, turning her hair to a live flame. It physically hurt Sasuke to look at her; she was a bonfire on the beach, beautiful and fleeting.

"I'm fine, Sasuke. Just a little tired."

"Yeah. Me too."

The sand around them awash in bloody light, the sat next to each other, and watched the sink below the horizon.

—

(darkness

midnight

witching hour)

ni_gh_**t-t**_i_m**e**—_and how they held hands in the rain, and began to fall in love_

.

"I told you it was going to storm."

Later at night, while the world slept, Sakura stood by the window, fingers pressed against fogged-up glass. Sasuke stood a foot behind her, and watched the rain fall against the pane, running in clear rivulets. Thunder shook the cabin, and the two teenagers stared in awe as lightning lit the sky's anger-clouded face neon purple-white-blue.

"You did." Of course, she hadn't, but Sasuke preferred it this way.

She laughed softly, the lightning lighting her face for a split-second. It was long enough for Sasuke to see the flush of excitement that had risen in her cheeks.

"C'mon, let's go," she murmured, and grabbed his wrist.

Sasuke didn't have the heart to deny her; not now.

And so the two snuck out to the back door; Sakura was careful of the creaky floorboards of the old cabin, and Sasuke followed her footsteps silently. They would both be in trouble, if they were caught.

But the rain sang along the rafters, crooning a staccato violin melody in both their veins; _one-two-three-four-one-two-three-four_. Neither could deny the pull that the night held.

They stood, quiet, fingers entwined, on the porch, for barely a minute.

"Ready?"

"Hn."

The first step off the porch was quiet and trembling, only a breath of soaked air. Sakura's white night-gown was wet at the front hem, the rain reaching towards her with welcoming arms. She looked at him, eyes wide and childish, really open for the first time that summer.

Sakura tucked her hair behind her ears, and dashed out into the drenched world, a silent imp-laugh etched on her face. Sasuke was next to her, and the two ran and ran until they reached the ocean. It was violent, dancing with the raging sky, and Sakura had never seen something quite as wild.

She shook her sopping hair out of her eyes, and looked up at her companion. She and Sasuke were kind of like that, too. They were kind of like the ocean and the sky.

Her voice was slow and soft, unheard over the dull roar of the ocean and the rumble of thunder. "So I think I'm in love with you. What else is new?"

She didn't even know if he was going to hear it.

"Sakura."

"Huh?"

She tilted her head up, and stared at him, a question in her eyes. Sasuke stared back, for a moment. Pink on green on clinging-drenched-white.

Love, huh?

She was still holding his hand.

He dipped his head down, and very carefully sealed his lips against hers.

There, in the rain, in the dark depths of night, by the ocean, a fragile-quiet relationship was born.

They had another summer.

They'd always have another summer.

—

.

.

.

.

.

_fin_.

**notes3**: i now feel much better. if it's weird / makes no sense, blame Hollywood Undead. Also, reviews make me flail!


	11. questionable content

**disclaimer**: snow in May is shitty. so no. also, the title has nothing to do with anything.**  
dedication**: to les. STOP STEALING MY LINES.**  
notes**: so there's like eight million of these half-started one-shots sitting around my notebook, and i'm only _now_ just getting the tits to write them out.**  
notes2**: CANON WUT. or, like, not, because current canon is more out there then anything i could come up with.

**title**: questionable content  
**summary**: Life is subjective. Sakura maintains that she's not dead and that people change, and Sasuke maintains that she's just kidding herself. — Sasuke/Sakura; 11/5o.

—

.

.

.

.

.

_this isn't us screwing up. this is me being pissed off._

_—_**what you feel is what you are, and what you are is beautiful**

.

Sasuke could see dead people (or maybe he was just crazy. One or the other, or maybe both, but he wasn't all that sure, anymore). It was meant in the best way possible, but, uh … yeah. He could see dead people.

So when he started seeing Sakura all over the place, he wasn't really all that surprised.

It wasn't even all that special—just a flash of pink, and maybe a wave, and if he was very, very lucky, he'd maybe get a smile. But that was only if he was lucky, and she had to be in a good mood.

(He didn't know how he knew her different moods. He just did.)

Her being dead didn't surprise him, because she always was weak. So of course she's dead.

But it was still Sakura. Still her smile—always tilted to one side, still her face—still almost heart-shaped, lacking the baby fat; it was _still her_, and a deeply-buried part of Sasuke had an urge to find whatever it was that killed her, and destroy it utterly. Nothing in the world should have killed her (because there was still a part of Sasuke that laid claim to Sakura; she was his to do with as he please, and how dared something take that right away), and Sasuke wondered if she'd ever stop moving, and actually talk to him.

Somehow, he didn't think so.

He hated that he was suddenly always chasing after her. It seemed too much like Karma, for Sasuke's taste.

Or something.

—

_this isn't us screwing up. this is you being stupid._

—**scar tissue that i wished you saw**

.

Sasuke knew she was dead because she was _around_. She was around _all the time_. He'd catch a glimpse of her ridiculous pink hair—

(He only stopped to think that their children would not, _could not_, have pink hair. It simply would not work. Uchiha children did not have _pink hair_. And Sasuke's brain never really connected the concept of "Sakura" with the concept of "dead". It just didn't, because even if she _was_ dead, he would just bring her back, annoying little girl. Sasuke was above things like death.)

—he'd whip around to see if it was really her. He would only ever be disappointed—she never stuck around that long.

She didn't stick around. That was how he knew that she was dead. An alive Sakura would never give up the chance to throw herself at him.

But a dead Sakura… that was an entirely different story.

And _entirely_ different story.

Once in a while, at night, Sasuke would let himself think of her. Itachi, too, and his mother and his father and his aunts and his uncles and every other dead person he'd ever known. He would think of them, and remember.

He didn't always like it, though. He was starting to forget his father's face and the static look of disapproval, and he was starting to forget his mother's eyes and her smile.

He especially didn't like it, because when that girl and her _ridiculous_ pink hair (it would be _black_; Sasuke would be _damned_ if he ever had a child with _pink hair_) kept popping up in equally horrifying places.

Like his _dreams_.

…

Stupid girl, Sasuke thought irritably. Stupid dead girl. She really had no idea what she was getting herself into. She was just so damn _stupid_ and so damn _dead_.

Everything was stupid, Sasuke decided.

Nothing was worth his time.

(They were always running out of time.)

—

_this isn't us screwing up. this is me saying hello._

—**i see you duck, you little punk, you little fuckin' disease**

.

The first time she deemed him worth of her words, it was fall, and Sasuke had been catching her around for almost a year.

Fall in Oto was mostly okay, he thought distantly.

"Hey, Sasuke-kun," she said, a scarf wrapped around her throat, and mittens on his hands. She didn't look like the kunoichi she was, not at all. It irked Sasuke some; she looked like a civilian, and that simply _irked_ him.

She ought not be in civilian clothes unless she was married, and since they were obviously _not_ married, clearly, she should not be dressed in anything other then her nin clothes.

Sasuke gritted his teeth.

"Sakura."

It was almost an acknowledgement. But only almost.

She smiled at him, autumn sunshine across her face. "You should come home."

"You're dead."

Sakura started to laugh. "Dead, am I? Since when? I wouldn't be here, if I was dead, Sasuke-kun."

Sakura stared at her. She _looked_ like Sakura—yes, she was Sakura, but with jaded eyes and bitter lines around her mouth, a crinkle in her nose, and a strange sick smile on her lips.

It wasn't quite the same as Dead-Itachi; because there was nothing in the world that would ever burn that image away from his retinas, nothing that could make him forget, but…

Silly dead girl.

"Go home, Sakura."

She raised an eyebrow at him, the sick smile still fixed in place. "Whatever you like, Sasuke-kun."

And then she was gone, and Sasuke could think straight again. His stomach clenched, a little, and he realized why he'd said "home", and not "away".

"Home", to Sakura, he knew, was wherever he was, wherever she was (or at least, that was what Sasuke thought. That was the way it was _supposed_ to be). If he told her to go home, she wouldn't disappear.

"Away" was something else completely. If he told her to go "away", she might actually leave.

—

_this isn't us screwing up. this is me not caring._

—**you'll never shine if you don't glow**

.

"I told you that on Naruto's behalf, by the way."

"Hn?"

The civilian-clothed-mittens-and-scarf Sakura was back. Bundled up, her breath came out solid, and Sasuke wondered if she'd just taken a shower, because there were ice crystals in her hair.

"That you should come home. I don't really care, anymore."

He blinked at her. She didn't _care_?

"Then why are you–" he broke off.

She got the question, anyways. Annoying girl, didn't know what she was talking about.

"I guess I'm here because I don't really have anywhere else to go."

She shrugged and smiled with that sick-sad smile that she seemed to reserve _just_ for him. Part of him screamed that she was lying, because she was _Sakura_, and that wasn't possible.

He wasn't sure what to say to that, so he remained silent.

She eyed him, for a moment. "…You still think I'm dead, don't you?"

"Hn."

"I'm not. Really. I've got a body, and I breathe and eat and _exist_. You know that."

Sasuke minutely shook his head. She was Sakura, and she was annoying. Just because she _existed_ didn't mean that she was _alive_.

—

_this isn't us screwing up. this is me telling the truth._

-** if you can't live without me, why aren't you dead yet?**

.

"You're not the same."

Sakura shot him her most deadpan look. "Of course I'm not. People change, you know, Sasuke-kun. No one is stagnant. No one's unchanging. Things don't work like that. If they did, I'd still be—"

She paused and looked pained.

"Hn?"

"If they did, I'd still be in love with you."

—

_**this**__ is us screwing up. idiot._

—**don't waste your time on me, you're already the voice inside my head**

.

He hadn't seen her in a week.

She was dead. He shouldn't have seen her in the first place. Normal people don't see dead people. That didn't stop him from hating the world.

Stupid, annoying, _dead_ girl.

—

_this isn't us screwing up. this is you trying to fix something too broken to be fixed._

—**i'm coming out of my cage, and i've been doing just fine**

.

Sasuke was back to chasing her again.

But this time, she didn't want to be caught, or so it seemed. The flashes of pink were fewer and fewer as the days went on, and a slow cold was building up in Sasuke's chest.

(What happens when the dead move on? Was she really leaving?)

He didn't want that.

She couldn't be dead.

She _had_ to be alive.

—

_this isn't us screwing up. we don't screw up, anymore._

—**it just takes some time, little girl, you're in the middle of the ride**

.

He didn't catch her until spring. She was still civilian-clothes-mittens-scarf.

(There was still snow on the ground, so maybe it wasn't spring yet, but it was close. February was spring, right?)

"Sakura."

"Oh, my god, Sasuke-kun. What—you—I—how did you—I DON'T LIKE YOU."

He didn't really want to touch her. The stupid, annoying, _dead_ girl didn't have a body. But Sasuke had a sick feeling in his stomach that _this_ Sakura was—okay, alive, and different, and had a body, and was breathing, and was _alive_.

"You said you didn't love me anymore."

"I _don't_," she corrected, moving pink strands of hair out of her eyes. "Present-tense. I don't love you anymore."

Hearing her say it aloud hurt more then Sasuke wanted to admit.

"And right now, I'm going to talk, and you're going to listen, and you're going to _think_, and you're _not_ going to be stupid, because if you are, I will _break your jaw_."

He wasn't sure what to say, then. It was an odd flavour, speechlessness—like ragged pain stuffed in on itself until there wasn't anything but biting nausea. It was biting nausea, in the form of the realization that she was dead and that she _really_ didn't need him anymore.

Sasuke hated the world, again. He was half-tempted to stop chasing her, then (but something told him he'd be chasing her for the rest of his life, and as much as Sasuke hated it, he didn't deny it; he owed her that much).

"You make me sick."

He knew that.

"You _broke_ my _heart_."

He was trying to forget that—_that_. He didn't ever think about it, really. Only when she wasn't around.

"You're horrible, and emotionless, and I don't even think you know what the verb 'love' really _means_, and half the time, you're more of a _moron_ then _Naruto_ is, and that's _saying_ something, and _I don't love you anymore_—"

He knew that she could see him wincing at every word. Sasuke knew he deserved it. If there was one good thing about his damn bangs, it was that they were very good for hiding a person's eyes. Sasuke let his head drop.

"—But I'm willing to let you try. If that's enough for you, it's enough for me." She paused, and then continued. "To translate into boy-language: I'm giving you a chance, Sasuke-kun. Don't fuck it up."

Her eyes were still jaded in a way that Sasuke knew would never go away.

But she was Sakura, and was just a stupid dead girl, and he couldn't leave her alone, because if he did, she might actually just die, and that was something that was never supposed to happen.

"You're not dead."

"I never was, Sasuke-kun."

—

.

.

.

.

.

_fin_.

**notes3**: i am _shit_ at endings. srsly.


	12. barbie girl

**disclaimer**: FFFFFF.**  
dedication**: to my mother and les and dana and sonya for listening to me wail like a three-year-old. UNIVERSITY GO AWAY ALREADY.  
**notes**: aaand i'm back to the world of AU.  
**notes2**: omigosh, i love trash TV. (can you tell i've been watching way too much Gossip Girl / MTV in general?)

**title**: barbie girl  
**summary**: You disgust me, did you know that? — Sasuke/Sakura; 12/5o.

—

.

.

.

.

.

High-class society.

What a horrible thing.

Haruno Sakura sat in front of a mirror, running a flat-iron over her just-blow-dried hair. To her left, her best friend was staring at her nails, a bored, deadpan look on Karin's glossed lips. To her right, her other best friend was doing the exact opposite; Ino was wielding a curling iron like it was a lethal weapon. And it probably was.

Sakura's stomach churned.

The night would be a swirl of beautiful people, glitzy clothes, catty conversation, and expensive perfume. And Sakura would be sick by the end of it.

Sakura sighed, her thick, mascara-smothered eyelashes brushing her cheekbones every time she blinked.

It was time for another night on the strip.

"He's going to be out there, tonight," Karin, dressed in champagne-coloured silk, said, head down. "I can't change that, Sak. He does what he wants."

Ino froze, and both girls waited for Sakura's reaction.

Sakura just raised an eyebrow. "Sasuke's not my problem. We're not together. We never were, remember?"

"You are _engaged_ to him. Remember? In case you don't, I do. And I remember the fit you threw when your mother told you. It was the fit to end all fits."

Sakura stared at them darkly. "You _both_ know how I feel about trophy wives."

"That doesn't matter, Sakura!" Ino shook blonde curls out of her way. "You're still going to be married to him, in, like—a while!"

Sakura scoffed.

"That doesn't mean I care what he thinks."

—

"I hate jazz."

"You're such a skank."

"How is that a good reply to that statement?"

"It isn't."

The glare of the florescent light glinted off Sakura's aviators. The huge glasses swallowed her face, and Konoha's night scene flared to life around her.

Or not.

It was more like Sakura was locked in a gala-room, surrounded by men in sickeningly perfect suits, and girls in stupidly torturous dresses, and the whole situation so _obscene_. The wineglass in her grip, filled with deep red wine, was clutched tight. Sakura's fingers curled around the stem of the glass, and it was _ridiculous_.

Sakura looked for Ino.

The girl was standing in the center of the room, glittering like some twisted shadow-butterfly, and Sakura's stomach contracted beneath the ink-coloured cloth that swathed her body in black lace and satin.

A voice in her ear murmured "Look who came out to play."

Venom filtered into Sakura's system as she felt a nauseatingly familiar hand on her waist, and she smiled. "Hello, darling, I thought you stopped breathing a long time ago. What a pity."

Sakura didn't have to see his face to know his touch. She really hated Sasuke, sometimes.

"I saw your father. He looks well."

"He is. Get your dirty hands off my body, we're not married yet."

Sakura felt Sasuke put enough pressure on her waist to force her to turn her towards him, and Sakura knew what he was going to say before the words left his mouth; she could see them, unhurried and predatory, in his eyes.

"Keep an appearance up, no one knows we're not happy."

Sakura smiled up at him, the picture of innocent love. "No one knows how much I despise you, either. This isn't love. This isn't even _like_. Don't pretend it's anything but what it is, Sasuke. And what this _is_, is my father throwing me to the sharks. So just _don't_."

A smirk tore itself across his face. Sasuke bent down so that his head was very close to hers, and pressed his forehead against hers. He dragged his hand up the side of her cheek—Sakura could feel his reluctance (or at least it felt like reluctance; she absolutely refused to believe it was anything else).

They looked, for all the world, like a couple in the first sweet stages of love.

"I'm going to kiss you."

"I'm going to punch you."

Sasuke lowered his mouth to hers, regardless.

—

"What the _hell_ was _that_?" Karin hissed in Sakura's ear, and the two girls were running towards the cab waiting for them at the foot of the stairs.

"I don't—it was—it was Sasuke being a douche, what else? Where's Ino?"

Karin scoffed, shoved her hair out of her face. "That was _not_ just your fiancé being a douche. That was _something else entirely_. And Ino's still in there!"

"GO," Sakura ordered the cabby, and tried to collect her thoughts. "Ino'll be fine. I needed to get the hell out of there."

"Please tell me that wasn't you and he making out. Because if it was, I get to go '_Na, na, na, na, naaa, I told you so_!'"

Sakura didn't even look up. "He was raping me. We were _not_ making out!"

"Of course you weren't. I'm taking my contacts out."

"I _wasn't_! Here?"

"Don't start with me. You were just tongue-fucking a guy you were claiming, not even ten hours ago, to hate. Yes, here."

Sakura gave her a darkly significant look. "I was not. It's not like that. We _do_ hate each other."

"Yeah, and you're going to be married to him! You are _Haruno Sakura_, destroyer of _anything _and _everything_ that gets in your way, since, like, _forever_. _One boy_ should _not_ be having this effect on you!"

Sakura took one calming breath through her nose. "You said it yourself. I'm getting _married_ to him. Our parents have only been pushing us on each other since _third grade_."

"You _used_ to have a thing for him."

"And then he broke my heart!" Sakura's cry silenced the redhead sitting next to her.

The interior of the cab remained quiet, for a moment.

The cabby murmured "Where to, mizzes?"

Karin shot a glance at the angry Sakura, and rubbed her temples. "Eighth Ave, the Bernard Callebeaut at the cross-section on Third, and then to four-oh-one Cherry Street. Please."

The cabby nodded, cap over his eyes, and they pulled smoothly away from the curb.

—

"You know, teme, Sakura-chan's never going to forgive you if you don't lighten up a bit."

"Don't call her that."

"Stop avoiding the subject! The least you could do is _apologize_!"

"Uchiha Sasuke does not _apologize_."

"And _that's_ the reason you're not getting laid. Duh."

"I hate you."

—

Sakura looked tiredly out the window.

It was devastatingly sunny.

"They told me."

She didn't bother to look around; she knew that voice, and _of course_ he'd be here. Sakura snorted a watery chuckle.

"Of course they told you. They wouldn't _not_ tell you. Daddy's stepping down. Letting me 'take the reins'. Like _I_ don't know what I'm supposed to be doing, or something equally insulting."

"You _do_ know what you're doing."

Sakura's back turned to a taut wire-line, and she snapped around to glare at him. "Of _course_ I know what I'm doing, Sasuke. I'm not _stupid_. Don't act like I am. I've only been preparing for this my entire life."

He said nothing.

Sakura's shoulder's slumped.

"If I take control of the company, like Daddy wants–" she paused, and took a deep breath. "–Then I have to do what's best _for_ the company."

She had always hated that he could put the pieces together so damn perfectly, like she was just a simple puzzle that he had no issue solving.

She could _feel_ his smirk against her skin. "So when's the wedding, Sakura?"

"Get out."

"You always see things my way." The door closed behind him with a resounding finality.

Sakura had to restrain herself from vomiting.

—

"You never told me what happened."

"Hm?"

"Between you and Sasuke. You never said—"

"Uh-huh, and that's the way it's gonna stay. I've only got a month of freedom left, Ino."

"Yeah. I know."

—

Sakura gathered up the voluminous skirts of her wedding dress. She smoothed her hands down the cool fabric, and hated everything.

Karin stuck her head in, red hair pulled into an elegant up-do. She stared at Sakura. "Are you sure about this?"

"Do I have a choice?"

"Would you ever purposely disappoint your parents?"

"No."

"Then you answered your own question, numbskull. You're not me, and you still care what your adults think. Either way. Your dad's waiting, and the march is about to start. C'mon."

Sakura sighed, and walked out of the room where she'd been hiding for the past few hours. "I'm getting married today," she murmured to herself, and sighed again.

"You look beautiful. My little girl," the words were whispered in her ear. It seemed to happen a lot, to Sakura.

"Thanks, daddy," she whispered in a oice that was kind, bright-eyed and fake-happy.

And then the Wedding March (Death Match) started, and Sakura started the shortest walk of her life.

—

Later, she wouldn't remember the ceremony. Actually, she wouldn't remember much of anything; Sakura was doing her damndest to repress the whole situation.

(Of course, it wasn't working, but it didn't hurt to try.)

But she did remember the look in Sasuke's eyes as she took that longest-shortest of walks, and she fixed in her memory how much she actually loathed him, at that moment.

It was the one thing she didn't want to forget.

—

.

.

.

.

.

_fin_.

**notes3**: …idk. wtf. i think i just confused myself.


	13. stay pretty

**disclaimer**: yeaaah. not gonna happen.**  
dedication**: to my super-awesome bee-eff-effs.**  
notes**: … omigod. i feel horrible. the MTV's Aftershow has my whole heart. the trash, she clogs my veins… ANDAND. BUFFY. (i want to _be_ her, okay?)

**title**: stay pretty**  
summary**: Even the beautiful lose control. — Sasuke/Sakura; 13/5o.

—

.

.

.

.

.

"What about her? She's hot."

"_No_, Karin."

"You _need_ to get a date!"

"Just because _you_ are dating does _not_ mean that I need to be."

"I am not _dating_ anyone. I am _hate-fucking_ someone. Totally different story. And Mom is going to _kill_ me if I let you show up at Itachi's Graduation-From-Being-A-Perfect-Son-To-A-Perfect-Lawyer-Congratulations thing _alone_. Remember the _last_ time that happened? It was at Uncle Maddy's Retirement-From-Being-Chief-Of-Police function? _Remember_?"

"…_Hn_."

Huff. "Don't _grunt_ at me, douchebag. You are _getting_ a date. _Or_, you could let me set you up with _someone_, and you will be _forced_ to like it."

"_No_, Karin!"

Karin gritted her teeth.

"Sasu-face. Darling. Brother of mine. You are going to shut up. You are going to do exactly as I say, because I absolutely _refuse_ to be seen with you in public if you're dateless. It makes me look like I have no friends, and that is _obviously_ not the case. So. I, amazing sister that I am, am going to set you up. If you insult the girl I set you up with in any way, shape, or form, I am giving her _full permission_ to _chop your balls off_."

Sasuke instinctively covered his manly bits.

Karin noted this, and smirked. "So, are we clear?"

Sasuke grumbled. "We're clear."

The smile that broke across Karin's face could only be described as _evil_. Sasuke was willing to bet his soul that he was completely and totally _fucked_.

"Good boy. We can be friends again."

"Hn."

—

"Pleeeeeease, Sak! It's just one night, and he _really_ needs a date!"

"Why don't _you_ go with him?"

Karin rolled her eyes, and glared at her best friend. "Uhm, okay, one, _ew_, he's my _brother_, and two, I'm, uhm, I'm kind of bringing Suigetsu."

Sakura looked faintly flabbergasted. "…Omigod, that's, like, a _date_. Are you two actually _dating_ now? Like, it's not _just sex_?"

Karin's face suddenly matched the colour of her hair. "No," she hissed, "we are _not_ dating, and _you_ need to be my brother's date! _Don't_ make me bring out my blackmail book, Haruno, because I am _totally_ not above that!"

"You _wouldn't_."

"_Try me_."

Both girls were very quiet, for a second. Karin's jaw was set, and Sakura just _knew_ that look. It never went well, when Karin got that particular look in her eye.

"…I _hate_ you"

"Sure you do, sweetheart."

"_Fine_. But you _owe_ me, Karin. Like, you owe me a _star_, or something, okay?"

Karin studied her perfectly manicured nails. "Of course, dear. Whatever you say."

—

Sakura surveyed the inside of her bedroom, lips pursed in distaste. There were clothes thrown everywhere, pell-mell across the floor; things were out of place; the covers were thrown off the bed, and bundled up in a corner, and Karin was sitting in the middle of the room, holding a mascara brush, a maniacal gleam in her eye.

It kind of looked like a hurricane had gone through, actually.

"Sakura, come here, and let me make you pretty."

"Omigod, Ino gave you some of her crack, didn't she? Where's my phone, I need to call Hinata, this is _cheating_- GET YOUR HANDS OFF ME. RAPE. RAPE. NON-CONSENSUAL SEXUAL CONTACT. RAAAAPE."

Karin rolled her eyes, and forced Sakura to sit down. She was half-tempted to slap something (duct-tape; it had a light side and a dark side and held the world together) across Sakura's mouth, but that would just ruin the whole effect, and Sakura had to look _somewhat_ nice. Her glance flickered to the digital clock, sitting on Sakura's night-table.

Two hours. Hardly enough time.

"Alright, Sakura. My brother is going to be here to pick you up in _two hours_. So I have _two hours_ to make you pretty enough that he'll get off his stupid lame ass and _ask you out for real_."

Sakura looked scandalized. "Why does it _matter_?"

"Someone needs to make Sasuke normal, Sakura."

"But why does it have to be _me_?"

Karin shrugged, and chose her words bluntly, without care—she was Karin, and she was known for things like that.

"You know why it's always you? It's always you because you're the only one who'll give his lack of personality a chance. Now, would please just _shut up_, and let me work my _magic_?"

—

Two _very_ painful hours later, and Sakura was dolled up, and ready to go.

Karin gave her an imperious nod.

"Sak, if he doesn't show up, or he treats you rudely, or, like _anything_, I give you permission to castrate him. Obviously, as his sister, I have this right."

Sakura just snorted. "Get out, I'm pretty sure your date's waiting for you."

Karin steamed. "FUCK-BUDDY."

"Same difference!" sang Sakura.

Karin was already out the door.

Sakura sighed, and sat down. Sakura knew Sasuke—and she knew that he was no doubt going to protest the fact that Karin had forced this on the both of them by being as late as he possibly could.

She didn't really even blame him.

She'd only had a crush on him since the first time she'd _seen_ him, and that had been a long, _long_ time ago.

Of course, for most of that long, _long_ time, Karin had been trying (and failing) to set them up together. Sakura had simply come to the conclusion that Sasuke just wasn't interested in females (or males) like _that_.

It was such a _pity_.

Sakura groaned, and buried her face in her hands (and was careful not to smudge her eyeliner. Karin would _kill_ her), and waited for the doorbell to ring.

And waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Ten minutes to eight (he was twenty minutes late; so typically Sasuke), the bell rang, and Sakura opened the door.

_Why_ did he have to be so damn attractive?

(Real boys were not supposed to look like that. Real boys were supposed to be… like… well, like Naruto. Only slightly less dense.

… Never mind. Sakura knew no real boys.)

The way he was just all in black and was _perfect_ and this was _so not fair_. Black suit, white dress shit, champagne-coloured tie…

_Motherfucker_.

Karin had co-ordinated their outfits (champagne tie, champagne dress? _NOT A COINCIDENCE. STUPID KARIN_). Sakura was going to _kill_ her.

"Hey."

Sakura tucked errant strands of pastel pink behind one ear. "Hi. Ready to go?"

"Hn."

He turned, and started to walk away.

Sakura smiled a small, tired smile, and followed after him.

—

"You brought Sakura-chan?"

"Blame Karin."

"No. No. _No_. NO. This is _momentous_, man! THIS IS EARTH-SHATTERING INFORMATION, HERE! The _great_ Uchiha Sasuke-teme, taken down a peg or eight, and all by a _girl_ he'd claimed to have no special feelings about, even though every single guy who tried to get near her got—"

"Close your mouth, or I'll close it for you."

"Ohh, Sasuke-teme, I didn't know you had such _strong_ feelings for me, I'll have to tell Sakura-chan that you—GAK."

"_Die_."

Naruto shook off the death grip that Sasuke had on his throat, and managed to escape the steaming Doom Glare that the dark boy was infamous for.

"Teme, just go ask her for a dance! She _is_ your date. You should thank Karin."

Sasuke just growled incoherently. His eyes had just landed on the throng of people converging on his kid sister and his—_growl—_date. "_Christ_."

Naruto didn't even have to crack his knuckles.

He already knew how this was going to go.

—

"Sasuke, you're going to rip my arm out of its socket! Are you _trying_ to kill me?"

He grunted at her, and dragged her further away from the party; all the way outside, to the balcony. The normally-permanent scowl had morphed into a snarl, and Sasuke just looked _really_ ticked off.

Sakura was not impressed.

The scent of burnt sugar was caught on the breeze, cloying and sick-sweet, sticking to her skin. Sakura wondered why things always got so awkward between them, whenever they were left alone. She looked up at him, and blinked.

In the darkness of the balcony, Sasuke watched the half-light from inside glimmer on Sakura's skin; she had used some glittery substance that made her shimmer like some sort of mirage.

Weird girl.

"Why did we stop being friends?"

Sakura hadn't wanted to ask him that—had never wanted to ask him that. But the words forced themselves out of her throat before she could stop them, and Sakura didn't have the chance to constrict her vocal cords, and stop those stupid words from slipping out, and lingering in the burnt-sugar-air.

He just shrugged.

Time, maybe, Sakura thought. Time, and his stupid ex-girlfriends, and her even stupider ex-boyfriends, and just high-school in general.

But mostly time.

(Sakura wasn't lying to herself.

It didn't have to do with the non-existent burning jealousy, or the not there stomach-lining of guilt. It didn't have to do with the nights where she didn't cry herself to sleep. It didn't have to do with the imaginary un-sent text messages.

It didn't have to do with that.

Really.)

Sakura laughed a little weakly. "It's kinda sad, huh? I mean, we grew up together…"

They remained quiet, looking everywhere but each other.

Sasuke didn't want to look at her, because he knew that if he did, he'd have to answer her stupid questions. And he didn't want that because they made his insides knot, and it was just _wrong_.

Sakura didn't want to look at him, because she knew that if she did, she'd say all the hideous things that hung in the air between them, thick as curdled milk, spoiled and sick and just _wrong_.

Sakura walked to the far edge of the balcony; she needed to catch her breath, and get her thoughts in order, and her emotions in control.

Sometimes, Sakura hated that he didn't even have to say anything to make her want to cry and die and kill things.

It just wasn't fair.

Sasuke stood back, and stared at her turned back for a moment. Sakura's exposed shoulder blades were taut with tension, and Sasuke wondered silently if he would always cause her such pain.

He made himself sick, every so often.

He trod towards her, scared and gentle and I'm-trying-not-to-fuck-this-up-please-forgive-me, and Sakura's shoulders tensed more.

_Please touch me. Please don't leave me alone_.

Sasuke didn't look down at her. He just carefully slipped his fingers in between hers, and left them there.

She didn't move away, and warily leaned into his shoulder.

It was enough.

—

.

.

.

.

.

_fin_.

**notes2**: a present to myself for surviving AP exams. biznitch.  
**notes3**: also, there will likely be sequels/prequels for all of these eventually. but. meh. idk.


	14. keep trying

**disclaimer**: nope.**  
dedication**: to my mother—happy Mother's Day, mom! also to** les**. you know why.**  
notes**: somehow, when i was walking down a street downtown, this image hit me, it was too strong not to write down. thank sonya for being my bounce-board for ideas.  
**notes2**: ANGST UHM WUT.

**title**: keep trying**  
summary**: The world was blurring by, and she and he were simply caught in the current, like fallen leaves on a crystal clear creek. "Falling out of love is easy, Sakura." — Sakura/Sasuke; 14/5o.

—

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.

At 9am, Konoha's city-core was buzzing with life. Smoke belched from the towers that reached into the clear morning sky, and from across the street, a jack-hammer's litany of destruction sung.

Sakura's heels clicked smartly against the sidewalk, her lab coat packed neatly away into her briefcase. The capital was growing faster then the people who resided in it could acclimatise to the new environment—all the time, there were people moving in, moving closer to the urban center.

She supposed that people moved to where there was work.

But the _noise_.

All night, every night, all day, every day, the noise of a building metropolis, metal on metal, rang through the streets. It echoed off the half-constructed buildings, rebounding back and forth, until it was a dull roar of mechanics ringing through the air.

The sun rose and set.

The city sped by around her, and Sakura walked towards the hospital, again.

—

Sakura really didn't enjoy organizing hospital benefits. Yes, the hospital needed the money, and _yes_, it helped keep the children happy, and _yes_, Sakura would be happy because after it was over, she'd finally have the funding required for the new research wing.

But that was still weeks away, and until then, the benefit would be the bane of Sakura's existence.

The phone rang. It was noon, and it was the first time Sakura had been disturbed that day. She shot a brief look up, and her eyes focused on the offending object. She closed her eyes, and hoped it would stop ringing.

It didn't.

She sighed, and picked it up. "Hello?"

The voice that crackled through the earpiece was too familiar. "It's me, Sakura-chan."

Sakura groaned. "Oh, Naruto, I thought I told you not to call unless something was wrong with Hinata's pregnancy–"

"Hina-chan is _fine_, I'm taking good care of her, just like you said."

"Then why are you calling me? I'm doing paperwork, the hospital benefit is in three weeks and–"

"You need to get out more, Sakura-chan. But, uh…"

He paused. Hesitant Naruto. That was never good. Hesistant Naruto only showed up when Normal Naruto was going to say something about –

"It's actually about Sasuke-teme."

Sasuke.

The sound of silence buzzed in Sakura's ear. The question of where to go with this was moot.

"_No_, Naruto."

"But _Sa-ku-ra-chan_, you haven't even let me say anything!"

"I don't need to let you say anything. I already know what you're going to say. I don't need to hear it."

She could almost _hear_ him mentally preparing for the rant that was about to start flowing out of his throat. Naruto was good at that—ranting. He was good at making people believe.

But Sasuke—and all that they had ever been—was not one of the things that Sakura was prepared to believe in. Not this time.

"It's okay, Naruto. Things are… okay. Are you coming to the benefit?"

"But—Hinata-chan said—_Sakura-chan_!"

Sakura laughed softly. "I'll take that as a yes. Tell Hinata that I said hello. And tell her that she should stop letting Ino force her into forcing you into trying to fix my train-wreck of a marriage. See you in three weeks."

She gently set the phone back down in its cradle, and closed her eyes with a sad sigh.

—

Three days before the hospital benefit, Sakura accidentally ran into her husband.

It had been a shit morning. She'd forgotten to set her alarm and had over-slept. She'd managed a shower without killing herself, but she'd accidentally sliced her leg open when she'd been shaving. She'd spilled hot coffee on her white blouse, and then discovered a run in her stocking.

It had added up to her leaving the house far later then she normally would have done.

Sakura was _never_ later.

Because when she was late, there was a chance that Sasuke would end up coming home. And, exactly as she'd predicted, he had.

And she'd barrelled straight into him, head-first. Papers had gone flying, two brief-cases unlatching and scattering their respective contents through the entrance hall. For a moment, Sakura was utterly confused about what was going on. Sasuke was home early (or was it late?)

Either way, as it was, she was on the floor, rubbing her head to make the sharp pain go away.

…Yeah, a shit morning.

Sakura was pretty sure this was Karma's way of saying "_And __**that's**__ what you get for bitching Naruto out, stupid, because that's, like, against the laws of the universe or something._" She looked up, and blinked at the man she was legally bound to.

She hadn't seen him in a month and a half.

Sakura hated the fact that, even after five years of marriage, he was still the most attractive man she'd ever laid eyes on. The stubble on his cheeks was—Sakura restrained herself. He needed to shave, despite the dangerous cast it leant his eyes.

He was still Sasuke. He still set the butterflies in her stomach off. He still made her want to strangle him.

But mostly, he still just made her sad.

She smiled at him, and started gathering up the contents of the two brief-cases. "Good morning, Sasuke. I have to run—I was supposed to be at the hospital, oh, ten minutes ago."

"Here," he murmured, and knelt down to help her.

Sakura felt like a deer in headlights. She hadn't heard his voice in—how long had it been? Two months? Three?

"Uh, thanks."

It took them more then ten minutes to get the papers in order. Sakura could feel his presence prickling against her consciousness; it was an uncomfortable sensation that was entirely unique to him.

Sakura straightened her clothes, carefully laid her paperwork back in her brief case, and snapped the latch closed. It seemed to echo in the foyer; a lonely melody that screamed of all that was wrong with this not-family.

Sakura tucked her bangs behind her right ear, and tilted her head. "I really have to go. I'll see you at the benefit, won't I? I'm sure you got an invitation…"

It really shouldn't have even been a question. She'd only been working on it for a month. His being there shouldn't have even been part of the _equation_.

He just nodded. "I'll see what I can do. Friday evening, correct?"

"Yes. Now I really have to go."

She stood up, and was about to leave. She looked at him, and hesitated. Then she very carefully stood on tiptoe (which wasn't saying much, as her gorgeous Dolce and Gabbana heels lifted her higher then her tiptoes could), and pressed her lips to his stubbly jaw.

"See you later."

The door closed behind her as she dashed away, and she didn't catch the very soft, quietly melancholy voice that murmured "I love you."

—

"Karin, I _ran into_ him."

The sisters were sitting in a bar in the middle of the city. Being a lawyer was good for Karin, Sakura thought; it suited her personality. And it gave her a reason to bitch twenty-four seven, and then defend her legal right to it.

"_You_ are overreacting."

"HOW IS THIS AN OVERREACTION? THIS IS NOT AN OVERREACTION, THIS IS–"

Karin inspected her nails. "This is you overreacting to something that you shouldn't be reacting over. He's your _husband_."

"With whom I've had limited contact with, in the five years we've been married! Isn't that more then just a _little_ bit wrong?"

"Sakura. I am going to tell you something. You are my twin sister, and my best friend. But sometimes, you are really, _really_ stupid."

Sakura closed her eyes. "Karin, I don't think he even knew about the benefit. We hadn't seen each other in _three weeks_. That's not how two people in love are supposed to be."

"Love is work. You know that."

"No! Not _this_ much work! And I was looking through my work papers this morning, and–"

"You couldn't find them, could you? Of all things, you lost those stupid papers. Well, maybe it's a sign. Love is work, but this is _Sasuke_ we're talking about. And… Falling out of love is easy, Sakura."

"…Why do you have to make so much _sense_?"

"Because I've known you since the second you were born. What happened to the Haruno Sakura who was getting married to the love of her life at twenty-two, and happier then I've ever seen her?"

"She grew up."

Karin chuckled dryly, and knocked back the shot of vodka that was sitting on the counter in front of her. "Welcome to the real world, honey. It sucks shit."

—

When Sakura got home that night, Sasuke was sitting at the table, head in his hands.

Sakura's secret divorce papers were sitting in front of him. She hadn't filled them out; they'd sat in the bottom of her briefcase, until that morning, a quiet reassurance that real life didn't have to be as empty as this _thing_ they had.

Neither of them said a word.

Sakura felt queasy, and walked away.

—

The benefit was glitz and glam and stunk of the filthy rich. Sakura had seen her husband, along with several of his lawyer friends, cavorting in the middle of the room. She'd seen Karin, too (her sister had looked ill), and Hinata and Naruto (hands linked, Hinata flushed with her pregnancy), and just—just _everyone_.

It was just _wonderful_.

Sakura politely excused herself to vomit.

—

The night didn't end for hours.

By the end of it, Sasuke was very, very drunk, and Sakura knew that getting him home was imperative.

Despite that, it was something that she really didn't want to do. She'd managed to avoid him for the two days prior to the benefit (not that it was a hard thing; they never saw each other, ever).

But this was something different.

"Come on, Sasuke, you're drunk," she murmured in his ear.

"M' not drunk, Sakura."

"You are," she insisted quietly, and dragged up him the fire escape. He kept … _touching_ her; he kept trying to tug her closer to him, kept trying to wrap his arms around her, kept trying to be—something they weren't.

Sakura wasn't sure if she ought to blow him off, or melt into his chest.

She decided on neither, and pulled him through the window, into their apartment. She half-dragged-half-carried him to their shared bedroom (Sakura couldn't actually remember the last time they'd slept in the same room. It had been so long ago), and propped him carefully against the bed.

"Sa-kura."

"You are so drunk, Sasuke."

"Hn…"

"Just—don't move, I'll get you some water."

"No," he mumbled, "stay here."

He clung to her. Sakura assumed the alcohol in his blood made him a little freer with his actions and a little loose-lipped then normal, because he whispered "I miss you a lot."

"Yeah," Sakura whispered back. "I miss you a lot, too."

"So stay."

"I can't."

"Please," and his voice was so desperately faint, she could barely hear it.

"Okay. Okay. Just sleep. I'll see you in the morning. We need to talk."

He didn't reply, and she knew that he'd fallen asleep. Sakura sighed, and pulled herself out of his grip.

She looked down at him for a long time.

And then she turned and left.

—

Morning didn't come for a long time.

—

Sakura looked out the window of her –_their_– apartment. The cup of coffee in her hands was still steaming, she was comfortably wrapped in a duvet, and the world passed by outside at an eye-blinding pace.

She was taking a day off.

She hadn't taken a day off since the first day of forever.

A soft sound of relief escaped her throat. So this was what slowing down and living life was like. Sakura decided she liked it, and tucked her toes underneath the blanket, and sipped her tea.

It was peaceful.

"Sakura…?"

But not peaceful enough. Sakura whipped her head around, and got a look at her sleep-mussed husband. She hadn't seen him like that in a long time.

She bit her lip. "Good morning, Sasuke."

They looked at each other. Sakura quietly marvelled at his presence. "You… probably need an explanation, don't you?"

"No."

"But I—wait, what, _no_?"

"Sakura, listen to me. I know I'm not perfect, but I'm still trying. Why'd you stop?"

"Stop what?"

"Stop trying."

Sakura gawked at him, green eyes wide and terrified. Sasuke was carefully avoiding her stare, his gaze fixed on the world outside. It would always have to had come to this.

"I didn't stop trying, Sasuke."

They could both hear the lie in her voice.

"I love you." His voice was monotone and flat. "I've loved you since the first day I saw you. I'm going to love you until the day I die."

"You never told me that."

"Hn."

"We're totally different people then we were when we got married."

"_Hn_."

"Please stop making this so hard."

"_No_," and the desperation was back in Sasuke's voice.

Sakura winced. "What are we, Sasuke?"

"We're married."

"What does that mean? We live together. We never see each other. We're miserable. That's not what being married means."

"Not miserable."

Sasuke took one step towards her. And then another, and then another, 'til he was hovering above her, so close that Sakura could barely breathe. He was everywhere—the scent of his skin was in her nose, and she knew that she was getting dizzy.

He knelt down, and looked at Sakura. "I live to watch you sleep."

"But you never watch me sleep."

Sasuke chuckled bitterly, the sound dry as bones in a desert. "I've watched you sleep every night for five years."

He was too close. Sakura found herself shaking her head, cup of coffee long forgotten. It was wrong—this, this wasn't—she wasn't—no, she hadn't been wrong.

But she had to be sure. Sakura wound her fingers through his hair, and pulled his face that inch closer. "What happens if I kiss you, Sasuke?"

"I hope you fall back in love."

"Oh. And if I don't?"

"I'll keep trying until you do."

—

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_fin_.

**notes3**: GLEE TONIGHT. WHO IS WITH ME? this may or may not have been written as a cop-out English 30-1 project. kaythanksbai.


	15. on girl kings and gay talking horses

**disclaimer**: not likely.  
**dedication**: to sonya + les + eden (you're still my Draco Malfoy) + … idk, sleep. oh yeah, and Buffy. so i'm slightly addicted. whut.  
**notes**: so let's just admit it. the Leafs suck. get over it, Toronto.  
**notes2**: wow, total crack. great.

**title**: on girl kings and gay talking horses  
**summary**: In which many a bad stereotypical fairytale cliché is used. "I'm Haruno Sakura, and I'm here to rescue you from the big bad dragon." — Sasuke/Sakura; 15/5o.

—

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.

.

"_Pardon_?"

"Yes, Highness, well, the thing is—you see, you need credit."

"_Excuse me_?"

"To—to rule, dear. Er, well, you see, you need _credit_. To prove that you you could rule as well as—well, as well as your cousin, say."

"He will _not_ be taking my throne."

"Of course not, m'Lady. But you need to… save someone, I suppose."

"I was raised _like a boy_. I ride, I hunt, I can fight _like a boy_. I fence; I've played chess and won at strategy games _like a boy_ my entire life. I've outsmarted all the other pages and squires and, in most cases, the other knights. They're _all boys_. And suddenly you're telling me that just because I'm _not_ a boy, I have to _save someone_ so that I can rule _my own kingdom_?"

"…Yes?"

"_NO_! That's _not right_!"

"You need the credit, m'Lady."

The single heir to Konoha's throne drew a long, pissed off breath of air in through her nose. "So I need to save a princess. Christ. Shouldn't be too hard, there are damsels in distress all over the place…"

"Er. Not a princess."

"…._What_?"

"It, uh, well, m'Lady, you need to save someone of the, uh, opposite gender."

"…I only have one request from you."

"Yes, m'Lady?"

"Please tell me you're not serious."

"I'm, er, well, serious."

"…_Are you KIDDING ME_?"

"No, m'Lady, I'm not.

"AWEDXCFGTYHGBJUIKMKLOPL."

—

"I can't _believe_ this, Naruto! I shouldn't have to fight for my own crown! I've done _everything_ they've asked!"

"Eh, but, Sakura-chan…"

"_No_, Naruto, it's not _fair_! And how many princes need saving from a tower? I mean, _seriously_, where am I going to find an idiot like that? It's like trying to find the perfect man—it's _totally impossible_!"

Naruto gave her a look that was between exasperated and fatigued. He was used to things like this.

They'd been best friends for a very long time—they'd been the two smallest pages, given that Sakura was the only girl, and Naruto was small for his age. Time had changed that, in some respects; Naruto had shot up, awkward in his still-growing body, shoulders wide, limbs long, and Sakura… well, she was still Sakura. Still vicious, still small, still—Sakura.

"I was raised to be a _king_! Not a princess, not a queen, a _king_."

"I know, Sakura-chan, I know! You beat me into the ground enough to prove that you can be a—a girl-ruler-person!"

Sakura winced.

"What am I supposed to _do_, Naruto?"

"…Save a prince?"

"Didn't we already go over this? _THEY'RE IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND_. I _swear_ this is just the council trying to undermine me, _again_, because, yeah, I know, they'd _totally_ prefer if a boy took it over, because boys are oh-so-much-smarter then a _delicate little thing like you_," Sakura mocked, disgusted.

The sarcasm that laced her words was so heavy that even Naruto got it. He shrugged. "Baa-chan might know a prince that needs saving. That old hag knows everyone, Sakura-chan. If there's a prince locked up in a tower somewhere, she'd probably know about it?"

Sakura beamed, teeth showing. "You're coming with me."

Naruto yelped. "_No way_, Sakura-chan! I love you, b-but _no_, she'll try to kill me again!"

He paused, and then flushed. "And I'm supposed'ta go find Hinata-chan, because—well, because—"

Naruto's flush was tingeing his ears. It was kind of funny. Sakura just laughed, and reached up to ruffle his sun-kissed hair. "Go find Hinata. I definitely approve."

He grinned at her, and took off.

Sakura ran her fingers through her hair, and went to find Naruto's grandmother.

—

Sakura sat on her horse in a hideously surly mood.

Tsunade (incidentally, the woman was one of Sakura's first teachers in both herb-lore and medicine, and she _still_ managed to scare the crap out of Sakura without trying) had screeched a bit, thrown things, ordered Sakura to clean her work-area up, and then had proceeded to imbibe copious amounts of alcohol.

But she _had_ told Sakura exactly what she wanted to know, albeit through a drunken, whispered stupor.

"Supposedly, there's a prince locked up in a tower, to the west, near Oto. They say he's waiting for a princess to save him. A curse, mayhaps?"

Sakura had muttered ungratefully, and went to pack her bags.

—

"How come none of the other rescuers ever had to go through this?" Sakura complained aloud, as she wrapped herself in a waterproof cloak. It had started to rain, and Sakura and Sakura's oh-so-valiant horse, Marcus, were still an hour from the tower where the stupid prince was supposedly housed. Sakura grumbled.

Marcus nickered loudly, and Sakura had the distinct feeling that the animal was _laughing_ at her.

That didn't make her feel much better.

Sakura clucked her tongue, and dug her heels into the Marcus' sides. She wanted to get to some sort of shelter, and wait the rain out. If she was lucky, there might be an abandoned hut nearby.

If not… well, if not, she was going to look like a drowned rat when she went to save her prince.

How attractive.

Sakura wrinkled her nose.

"Honey, if you get me wet, I am _never_ going to forgive you."

Sakura didn't even jump, anymore, when Marcus randomly opened his mouth and voiced his opinion (from what they were doing to her riding habit "You want me to allow you on back wearing _that_? Are you _mad_?").

Stupid talking horse.

"You know, sometimes I _really_ hate that you talk."

"Please. You'd be lonely, without me."

"Shut up. Let's go save ourselves a prince."

"Mmm, dibs."

"I can't _believe_ you, Marcus…"

—

"M'Lady, are you heading to the tower, to save the prince?"

Sakura was riding through a little village ten minutes away from the tower (because, yes, of course, the tower was that close to civilization; how _else_ would they get food for the prince? He couldn't just go _hungry_!), an old peasant-woman stopped her.

"Yes?" Sakura answered, bewildered.

"Ahh, child, prepare yourself. You have many a trial ahead of you."

"And you're telling me this… _why_?"

The old woman sighed, and glared at her. "Because you're going to _die_ if you don't shut up and _listen_. You need The Sword Of Bolvrangar and the Shield of Aegis if you want to kill the dragon that guards the young prince."

"…THERE'S A DRAGON? _REALLY? __**REEEEEEALLY**_? DOES THIS _REALLY_ NEED TO BE THIS COMPLICATED?"

"But, Lady, the sword—"

Sakura sighed, exasperated. "Look, do you have it? The sword and the shield, I mean. Do you have it?"

The crone looked flabbergasted. "But—how did you know that I—"

The soon-to-be-girl-king rolled bright green eyes. "Please, that's the way these things always go. I do not have the time to go on a long journey to become worthy of it. I need to get back to _ruling my kingdom_, so _please_ just _give me my sword_, and lemme go, already!"

The old woman huffed. Marcus snickered.

Sakura got The Sword of Bolvrangar and the Shield of Aegis, and off they went.

—

Hacking through brambles was _way_ over-rated.

"Sorry about this, Marcus," Sakura muttered through gritted teeth, and she chopped at the thorny braches that seemed to be obscuring every inch of forward vision.

Marcus was aghast.

"My _hooves_!"

"Oh, be _quiet_, you pansy pony."

"Ohhh, pansies are _nice_…"

Sakura was tempted to jump head-first into the brambles, and leave the bothersome talking-magical-oh-so-valiant horse behind. Honestly, she was pretty sure she could do this one on her own.

—

It took them three hours (and much complaining on Marcus' part, about his hooves being destroyed, and how they'd need so much care when they got home) to get through the brambles.

Sakura grumbled unpleasantly. "I am going to _kill_ this prince when I get my hands on him… Marcus, has anyone even told us his _name_?"

"No, darling. That would make it _far_ too easy."

Sakura muttered something about "dog food" underneath her breath. Marcus was appalled.

Together, girl and talking horse stood on the cobbled-stone bridge, and looked up at the castle.

"A hundred gold Nobles says he's at the top of the highest tower," Sakura said frankly.

Marcus pursed his horsey lips. "I only bet when I can win, honey."

Sakura groaned some more.

And then they were off to fight a dragon.

—

The dragon wasn't much of a dragon.

Three feet tall, violently purple, and…not very dangerous-looking. Sakura stared at it. "Aren't you supposed to be… I don't know, _bigger_?"

The dragon glared. "I wish. I wouldn't have been stuck with _this_ stupid job, if I was. But no. I'm purple. And guarding _this_ jerk."

Sakura raised an eyebrow. "Jerk, you say?"

"Yes! So whiny, all the time!"

Well, Mr. Dragon—"

"Call me Sandy."

"Well then, Sandy, I think that I have a proposition for you…"

—

"Did you just trade your sword and shield for free passage?"

"Yes. Yes, Marcus, I did."

Marcus continued to be appalled.

—

Sakura trudged up twelve flights of stone stairs. "I hate _everything_."

It was a nice tower, Sakura thought. A little draughty, because it was all made of stone, of course, and it could use a little sprucing up (Sakura was sure that Marcus would have been insulted at the interior décor. Marcus was weird, like that), but over-all, it was nice.

She ended up in front of an old oak door. Sakura knocked politely. Waited three minutes. Growled. Knocked again. Waited another three minutes.

"Oh, for _God's sake_," she muttered, and shoved the door open.

There was a very pretty person standing right near the open window. Sakura smiled in relief, and said "Hi! I'm Haruno Sakura, and I'm here to rescue you from the big bad dragon."

He completely ignored her.

Sakura twitched.

"Excuse me. Did you not hear me?"

"I heard you."

"Then why didn't you respond? Clearly, you're not deaf."

"Didn't feel like it."

"_Excuse me_?"

(Sakura was vaguely reminded of a previous conversation with a certain council member… She made a mental note to have him executed for daring to question her authority. And then she turned her attention back to the matter at hand.)

He turned around slowly, and Sakura's heart stopped as she got a glimpse at the most perfect face she'd ever seen. He was literally beautiful—all pale skin, and dangerous, smouldering dark eyes. Sakura was half-way in love with him, just _looking_ at him.

And then he opened his mouth.

"Go away, girl. I'm waiting for someone."

Sakura's jaw hung open. She hadn't even known people this rude _existed_. "I came to _save_ you, and you tell me to _go away_? What kind of prince _are_ you?"

"A frank one."

"Oh, for—c'mon, you're coming with me. We're getting you out of here, _I'm_ getting my damn credit, and then you can go back to your family, and we don't _ever_ have to see each other again."

Lady Haruno Sakura stalked up to the prince-whose-name-she-still-did-not-know, grabbed his arm, and dragged him out of the room.

—

"C'mon Marcus, I got our stupid prince, let's go."

Marcus was drooling.

Sakura sighed. "Marcus, stop it, you're creeping him out."

"How are _you_ doing? I'm Marcus."

The prince, in all his pretty princely glory, looked horrified. He looked at Sakura, and said "I am not riding on that _thing_."

Sakura set her jaw. "You don't have a choice. You can ride Marcus behind me, or you can walk, but you're _coming_ with us."

The prince scowled, and helped her onto Marcus' back before swinging himself up behind her.

Sakura just smiled. "That's what I thought."

—

"You know, I don't actually know your name. No one told me."

"Hn."

"Uh, that's an opening for a conversation, stupid."

"Hn."

"JUST TELL ME YOUR NAME, ALREADY."

"… Fine. Uchiha Sasuke."

"There, that wasn't so hard, was it?"

Sakura could tell that Marcus was drooling again. She didn't even want to know.

—

Mostly, the journey back to Konoha was quiet.

But when they finally _did_ get back to Konoha, Sakura pushed Sasuke off of Marcus' back, and glared down at him, sitting in the dust and the muck of the dirt road.

"So, I saved you. I get my credit, I get my kingdom, and you can _leave_."

The guy had the audacity to _stare_ at her.

"You don't know the requirements, do you?" Sasuke asked. He was ridiculously deadpan. It was sickening.

"What requirements?" Sakura asked in return, somewhat more then confused.

He looked about to slam his head against the ground. "You'll see."

Sakura shrugged, and dragged him off to visit the council.

—

"There! I saved him! Can I _please_ be allowed to sit on my throne, again?"

The room erupted into ecstatic applause. "Oh, Lady Sakura! We didn't think you'd so easily have chosen your husband! And Uchiha Sasuke, of all people!"

"Husband? Ebisu, what are you talking… about…?"

Sakura turned to look at Sasuke, horror-struck. "You mean… I have to _marry __**you**_?"

Sasuke just shrugged, and shoved his hands in his pockets. "I didn't think you knew the whole story. Now we're stuck together."

"But—but—but—"

"No buts, Lady Sakura! Now, we have to prepare your wedding dress. Oh, happy day!"

"SAKUJGASKJFGAKUHAL."

—

Sakura and Sasuke would eventually fall in love and have eight children.

But it wouldn't be for a long, long time.

(Marcus was faintly depressed.)

—

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.

_fin_.

**notes3**: ….yeah, defs gonna be a continuation of this one.


	16. the loving kind

**disclaimer**: …why do you even _ask_, anymore?  
**dedication**: to my penchant for loving the wrong people. it's kind of sickening.  
**notes**: a softer world = lessthanthree  
**notes2**: set about four years before "barbie girl", yesyes? yes, it's before their meltdown.

**title**: the loving kind**  
summary**: She's got the night sky in an umbrella, and it's raining monochrome rainbows and self-destruct orders under there. — Sasuke/Sakura; 16/5o.

—

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.

.

Late afternoon sunshine poured in through the skylights, catching motes of dust in the air, and sparkling violently in the silent auditorium. A feel of the ancient hung in the air, from the abused brown fabric of the seats, to the scent of stale air.

A girl sat at the piano, hands folded neatly in her lap, head bowed over the ivory keys, vibrant pink hair falling over her shoulders.

There was no one around.

She looked up, for the briefest moment. The auditorium remained empty.

She sat up a little straighter, bit her lip, and carefully unfolded her palms from her lap. She raised her hands, and splayed her fingers carefully out across the white-and-black-and-white keyboard.

The girl took a breath deep into her lungs.

She began to play.

(Because piano was easy –_CDEFGABC_–, and Sakura was good at piano. It was something she did for herself. One of the few things she did for herself, in fact.

That sort of made her sad, when she thought about it.)

The soft plinking of the piano lingered in the air for hours, afterward.

They called her Sakura.

—

Konoha's Academy for the Métier Inclined was Sakura's own personal hell. KAMI –as so many called it, God, a school for the business-minded children of the world– was the worst place for a girl like her.

It shouldn't have been. It was a beautiful old building, all red brick and gothic windows. As a building, it was wonderful. Sakura got in on both her family's old money (she could _hear_ her mother sniffing "_The neveux riche. They just __**have**__ to show off their money, don't they? Barbarians_"), and a piano scholarship.

But it was what it was, and it turned into Sakura's worst nightmare.

(Own personal hell was simply a more accurate term.)

She took a deep breath of crisp morning air into her lungs, and trudged towards the brown-red-brick building, blazing bright with the morning sun.

She couldn't even hate the place properly.

It was too damn _perfect_.

—

But more then anything, it was the little things that made Sakura despise KAMI.

Part of it was the politics. Part of it –a large part, in fact– was the social politics. He said, she said, they said, they did, she did, he did; it all made Sakura sigh, and retreat to the old auditorium, because dealing with all the stupid _politics_ was something she never wanted to have to do. Queen Bee, underlings, underlings' underlings… it all made her tired, and she just didn't _want_ it.

Part of it was the actual classes (and that was more then self-explanatory—Sakura had never enjoyed physics, anyways).

But mostly, it was because sitting alone in a classroom full of rich kids was just _so_ not Sakura's style. She bent her head down over the desk she was sitting at, and hid her face in her arms. She wasn't in the mood, not today, not ever, what was even the _point_, anymore?

As class ended, she grabbed her books, and walked out of the room.

Sakura felt eyes on the back of her neck, shivered, and spat on the asphalt as she began to walk away.

—

Four hours later, Sakura sat on the bleachers of KAMI's sister school (Konoha's Academy for the Athletically Inclined—Karin was a dancer), note book in hand. Happily scribbling away, she was waiting for her oldest friend to get out of dance.

Someone threw themselves down next to her.

Sakura didn't even look up. "Stop following me around."

"I don't _follow_ you around."

"Following, watching-me-during-class, same difference. It's still creepy."

"I don't _watch_ you, either."

"You do. I know you do. Give me some credit; I'm not some featureless character in a story. I _do_ happen to have a brain, thanks."

He was sitting so close; she could feel the contraction of his muscles as he rose and dropped his shoulders in a shrug.

"I'm Sasuke."

"Why are you introducing yourself? We've known each other since we were tiny. We practically grew up together."

He said nothing, and Sakura grumbled.

"Three weeks of senior year left."

"I know, Sasuke. Where are you headed, next year?"

"Business, Oto."

"Thought so."

"…"

Sakura snickered "Go away, Sasuke. Karin's going to be here soon, and you know how much she just _loves_ to see you. She might even not bite your head off, this time!"

The sarcasm on her voice almost made him wince.

Sasuke stood, fluid. He shoved his hands in his pockets, and looked down at her. Sakura thought he looked very far away.

It didn't bother her.

Really.

—

"I'm going for a run," Sakura told the empty house.

The door closed and locked behind her as she left.

—

Sakura liked running.

It wasn't something she did often, given that sports were really not in her vocabulary, but running… running was easy. Sakura was good, at running.

(And if that didn't say something about her, she didn't know what did; she was always running. Running from people, running from situations…

Sakura was good, at running.)

So she ran and ran, ran until her lungs convulsed and her leg muscles burned, ran until she couldn't run anymore. She ran until the stars were out, and she was left alone in the empty city, sitting at an equally empty fountain.

She sat on the fountain's lip, dragged her fingers through the unmoving water, and stared at the reflection in the warped reflection.

"You look like hell."

"Didn't I tell you to stop following me around?"

"That's a flip, isn't it?" he asked, his voice low and amused.

Sakura snapped her head up, her mouth gripped in a tight line. She glowered at him. "So what if it is?"

He shrugged, again, his shoulders flexing. Sakura, as much as she hated to admit it, had always been fascinated by the way Sasuke's muscles worked. It was probably just a side effect of her love of biology, but…

But she couldn't help staring at him, and she kind of hated that.

"Hn."

Sakura shrugged. "I know. Want to sit?"

"No."

He sat anyway.

—

"Are you going to grad?"

"Are you going to grad?"

"Are you going to grad?"

Areyougoingtograd**areyougoingtograd**_areyougoingtograd__**AREYOUGOINGTOGRAD**_?

Sakura hated that question.

Actually, she hated that question almost more then anything else. Would she be going if she didn't have to?

_No_.

But she had to. Ino and Karin had rounded her up, and quite literally _forced_ her out graduation dress shopping. And, of course, Sakura's _mother_… Well, _that_ was another matter entirely.

"Sakura."

They were in Chemistry. Stupid class, Sakura mused—who needed to know ionic compounds in Real Life? Not her; she kind of already had something lined up.

And when Sasuke walked up, during Chemistry, and opened his mouth, Sakura knew nothing good was going to come of this. She had a gut feeling. That, and she was in the middle of a titration experiment.

"Why are you talking to me? I'm working, here."

"Is anyone taking you grad?"

Sakura spluttered. "_What_?"

Sasuke glared.

"Oh, _shit_!" Sakura hissed, and pulled the beaker away from the titration's slow drip. She groaned. "You know, now I'm mad, Kurenai's gonna make me do the whole experiment, again. You suck."

"_Sakura_."

A small, mischievous grin made her way across her face, and she carefully placed the beaker full of failed titration mixture on the lab counter. She looked up through mascara darkened lashes, and smiled at him.

"Are you asking me to grad, Sasuke?"

He coloured a little, and Sakura nearly bit through her lip to stop herself from laughing. Blushing Uchiha Sasuke. Well, that was new.

"Hn."

"Ha! I so knew it."

"Sakura, you're being _annoying_."

"And you need to learn how to ask a girl out! You're lucky we've been friends for so long. I can't believe I'm giving you a chance…" she muttered under her breath.

"So is that a yes?"

Sakura smiled. "Sure. Why not?"

He almost smiled back.

—

Grad night, and Sakura was on self-destruct.

Anything, to get out of this.

Her hair was done; dress was perfect (sexual in a way that made her uncomfortable, but her mother approved); Sakura was glitter-sharp shards of perfection, until no one could say a word against her.

(She was good at that, too.

Being perfect.)

Sasuke took one look at her, and sighed in exasperation.

Sakura smiled, sharp teeth and suspicious eyes.

"Let's go."

—

"…This _isn't_ the way to school. Sasuke, where are we–"

He was driving, but he shrugged (again). Sakura was transfixed (again). "I know. Grad… It's not… right. Not tonight."

Sakura thought, then, that maybe marriage to Sasuke wouldn't be so bad.

He seemed to know her better than anyone else.

And Sakura was mostly okay with that.

—

.

.

.

.

.

_fin_.

**notes3**: i am… unsure of this. but i actually think i really like it a lot. reviews make me smile and dance in love (unlike my STILL-BROKEN IPOD.)


	17. monster hospital

**disclaimer**: ffffffff.**  
dedication**: to my super-cool bee-eff-effs. and also my lipgloss. and maybe House (actually just Cuddy. DUDE. LOVED THE NEW EPISODE. LIKE SO MUCH. HUDDYYYY).**  
notes**: "i watched you spin around in your highest heels" — dashboard confessional  
**notes2**: prequel to "keep trying". about a year&½ into their marriage—yes, Hinata will have been pregnant twice.

**title**: monster hospital  
**summary**: It's all about a doctor and a lawyer and different sides of the same country. The sound of the rain against the window was the cracks in the mirror-land that was their relationship. — Sasuke/Sakura; 17/5o.

—

.

.

.

.

.

She was doing paperwork, again.

Head bent over her desk, Sakura was exhausted. Her lab coat was thrown over the back of her chair, her black leather pumps were kicked off, hidden carefully underneath the desk.

She had been at it for hours, now, at the mound of paperwork that was still sitting next to her. The pencil was scratching a comfortingly familiar sound, against the cadence of the rain hitting the frosted glass.

The clock ticked.

The empty air was calm.

And still the pencil scratched.

—

Sakura walked home slowly as the sun rose behind a gloomy cloud cover, umbrella over her head, even as the rain didn't fall.

She didn't stumble.

She walked straight and clear, serene and elegant, unruffled by the necessities of real life. Green eyes were unfocused and hazy, and the slit-throat whispers of the shopkeepers.

(_"Haruno-sensei? Oh, she's a wonderful girl."_

"_Yes, I've heard that. They say she's genius. But she looks very lonely."_

"_She is. They say that she was married to—"_

"_Shh! Quiet, you two, she's right over there!_)

Sakura hadn't always been good at tuning out what other people thought of her. But she was better at it, now. Years of training had hardened her, and it was flinty eyes and a fierce smile that her enemies met.

But lonely… Yes, she was lonely.

Only sometimes, though.

She ambled up the steps to an empty apartment built for two in an empty building built for many, and walked inside.

—

(The phone calls go like this:

_**Me**__: Hi._

_**You**__: Hn._

_**Me**__: Be nice._

_**You**__: Sigh. How are—is everyone?_

_**Me**__: Naruto's been elected, again. The people love him, and he likes it, I guess. Hinata's having a baby. Their wedding is coming up, soon. Hiashi's still mad that Naruto couldn't keep it in his pants. Karin and Suigetsu broke up again, because she said he has commitment issues. They'll probably be back together by the end of the week. Neji finally convinced Tenten to move in with him. Ino and Kiba have a thing now, I guess, and Lee's mostly the same. Anko and Kakashi's little girl just turned three, and she's already a terror. And me… I'm good, I guess. Work is crazy. How are you?_

_**You**__: I'm fine, Sakura._

_**Me**__: I know you are, Sasuke-kun. Did they give you an estimate as to when you'll be able to come back?_

_**You**__: They never do._

_**Me**__: …_

_**You**__: …_

_**Me**__: I miss you._

_**You**__: I know._

_**Me**__: …_

_**You**__: …_

_**Me**__: You probably have stuff to do, and Ino's supposed to be here in a bit. So, uh, I'll let you go. I'll tell Naruto you said hello. Bye, Sasuke-kun._

_**You**__: Goodbye, Sakura._

_**Me**__: Come home soon, okay? I love you._

_**You**__: Goodbye, Sakura._

—_click_

They never amount to much, anyway.)

—

Two hundred miles away, Uchiha Sasuke looked down at the piece of half-finished litigation in front of him, and almost missed a girl-woman with an easy smile and soft pink hair.

He gritted his teeth, and went back to work.

—

Sakura put her hair up in a bun, messy strands all over the place, and got ready to smile at her first patient. She stared at herself for a minute in her office mirror, and then pulled herself together.

Three hours of sleep. Tired eyes. Dark circles under those tired eyes. Pasty skin. Lack of colour, lack of food. Ugly.

She sighed, and went to the clinic.

Her first patient of the day was a little girl, teddy bear under her right arm, sleepy-eyed and clinging to her mother's hand. Her name was Miyumi.

Sakura, still an intern, knelt down, looked the five-year-old in the eye, and said "Hey, sweetie, how're you feeling?"

The little girl looked miserable, and hid her face in her mother's arm.

Sakura smiled sadly, and stood up. She looked at the little girl's mother, and tilted her head. "So what happened?"

The mother sighed. "It started as an earache. Miyumi gets them often, from her father's side, we think, and they usually go away within a week, or so, but this one—didn't."

Sakura frowned, her nose scrunching up. "Hm. Has she been talking?"

The mother shook her head.

Sakura nodded, more to herself, then anything else. "Well. It might have progressed to her throat, and if that's the case, even if it has, it won't be too hard to get rid of. It's probably just an infection."

The mother exhaled a sigh of relief. "You'll feel better soon, honey, I promise."

The little girl smiled for the first time.

"Let's make you better, okay?" Sakura said.

Miyumi nodded, and clutched at her mother's hand.

—

The day went on.

The hospital was sterile white walls and quiet mourning. Sakura knew that there was very little comfort in the waiting room; people waited for bad news in uncomfortable chairs, life wasting away, hoping for someone else to get better.

Sakura washed her hands in antibacterial soap, and winced as the alcohol bit at the paper cuts on her fingertips.

She splashed water on her face, and rubbed her temples.

Sakura had sympathy. Too much, sometimes. The world was a cold, sad place, and when she had to deliver the message that someone loved was dying to the waiting family, she often felt her stomach churn.

Those were the times she missed Sasuke most.

So she sat in her office, and stared at the phone. It took more will then she possessed to force her hand to pick up the unoffending piece of plastic-and-metal, and dial the ten digits she knew best.

He was probably working, anyway.

The paperwork ended up consuming her, and she didn't surface for a long time.

—

Sakura walked home, again, umbrella over her head.

It rained, that day.

Sakura hadn't seen Sasuke in almost two weeks.

The sound of the rain against the window was the cracks in the mirror-land that was their relationship, and Sakura was left to stare out the clear glass pane down to the street below, rain water running in the gutters.

She sat at the window, and sipped a cup of hot, sweet tea, even before going to change out of the pencil skirt and champagne blouse she'd worn to work.

The phone rang.

Sakura reached for it. It was probably Naruto, or Ino, or Karin, or—

—"Hello?"

"_Sakura, come outside_."

The phone dropped out of her nerveless fingers, and Sakura stared out the window, down to the sidewalk. A lone figure dressed in black was standing on the sidewalk, completely drenched.

Sakura had left her apartment before she had even realized what she'd done, exactly, and five flights of stairs didn't stop her from running all the way down. She was out of breath when she got to the main floor, but that didn't stop her. She ran all the way, across the marble floor, out the revolving glass doors.

Within thirty seconds, Sakura was drenched, work clothes stuck to her body like a second skin. She didn't even care; she was too busy staring at her husband's face.

"Hi," and her lips barely moved.

"Hn."

"You didn't say you were coming back."

He shrugged, a little, and the movement brought Sakura back to high school, and then even before that, to middle school; SasukeSasukeSasuke, even then.

"You sounded lonely," he said.

"Only a little," she replied.

He spread his arms, a little, and Sakura launched herself at him. It had become an easy gesture in the days after their wedding; familiar, even.

Sakura inhaled rain and cologne and _Sasuke_, and was able to breathe properly for the first time in weeks.

"Missed you," she whispered, eyes shut tight, face pressed into his throat.

His arms were carefully around her waist, gentle, and he brushed his lips across the top of her head. In reply, he whispered against her hair.

"I know. I know."

—

.

.

.

.

.

_fin_.

**notes3**: mrrflr. reviews pless? as a graduation present?


	18. gen X

**disclaimer**: nothing. like. actually.  
**dedication**: TO SUMMERRRR. WHEREFORE ART THOU?  
**notes**: started ages ago when i was in mexico. a combination of tequila and Star Wars.  
**notes2**: there are like eight million references to my different fandoms, in here.  
**notes3**: also, i hate boys. but i like money. AND COSPLAYING EUPHIE. srsly.

**title**: gen X  
**summary**: "We messed up, Sasuke-kun. We messed up again." In real life, people die. They don't get this many chances. Take 'em and run for it, honey, you'll feel better. — Sasuke/Sakura; 18/5o.

—

.

.

.

.

.

genesis I  
(_a.k.a. that time we watched the sun set_)

They were frozen on the ground, next to each other. The sky bled red, and the sun set over a field of bodies.

Sakura laugh-coughed blood. "So this is it, huh? _This_ is how we die? _Really_? What happened–" she paused to hack a gush of black-red fluid. "–to the epic battle? What happened to Naruto-and-Sasuke-kun-and-Sakura-and-Kakashi-sensei?"

Sasuke's hair was matted with blood that most likely was not his own. He said nothing.

He had nothing to say, even if he wanted to try.

Sakura stared straight up at the sky. A bubble of blood popped at the corner of her mouth. "I hope Naruto's okay."

"Hn."

The laugh that cracked itself out of her body was painful; high and dry, angry. "Can't you say something else, for _once_?"

"Sakura, we're dying."

"I know." Her voice cracked again. "But—heh," she coughed, again, and when she pulled her hand away from her mouth, it was crimson. She grimaced. "I'm not supposed to die. I'm—better then this. Rogue-nin. Really."

And Sasuke understood the bitter self-loathing in her voice. Sakura was med-nin; she was supposed to be able to save herself.

Birds chirped in the distance, singing the dying day's praises. Nature, Sakura thought, was a very cruel thing. Cruel, and vengeful.

They lay there together, staring at the bloody evening sky.

"Hey. Sasuke-kun?"

"Hn?"

"Do—do you think we'll ever be... happy?"

"No."

Sakura smiled, and looked at him against the brilliance of the setting sun. She thought he was the most incredible thing to ever exist, even if he was twisted and cruel; he was only a mirror of her, and she knew that, at that second.

Her eyes were glassy.

"Maybe not this time. There'll be other–" pain bloomed "–other chances. I love you."

Sasuke managed to look over at her, just in time to watch the light in her eyes go out. He didn't live for a full sixty seconds more.

(Because there was no point to a world without her.)

—

genesis II  
(_a.k.a. that time you rode a dragon_)

She was a Rider, metal on leather, buckles and rings, laugh-laugh-laughing as she climbed up the flank of a dragon as brilliantly green as her eyes.

Sasuke didn't even know how he'd met her—a crazy girl with pink hair with an equally crazy personality. There was something that was déjà vu familiar about her. He couldn't put his finger on what it was, but it was there, and it made the back of his eyes itch.

The acid-green sword at her hip clanged war and death, and somehow, she managed to look innocent, one arm raised in the air in a wave, yelling at him from atop a dragon, violent-coloured hair dancing on the wind.

"Hey, Sasuke-kun! Naruto and I are headed back to Vorengard! Are you coming with us?"

He felt himself nod before he consciously thought about it, and mentally sighed as he realized what that hideous sense of déjà vu was.

She was beautiful.

And that always struck him, for some reason. It caught him off guard, sometimes, when he wasn't ready for it. But right then, covered in grime, he had never seen anything more beautiful.

The vibrantly green dragon shrieked a roar, and Sasuke watched as Sakura screamed laughter, and took off into the sky.

Silly girl.

She was really going to be the death of him.

(The Fall came soon afterward. Sasuke accidentally killed himself trying to save her. He took a sword in the back, and while it was a noble gesture, it didn't keep her alive. The sword of a former friend sliced through them both.

He hated that he had to watch her die, but thought it sickeningly right that they died on the same sword.

Maniacal laughter echoed, and the world went dark.)

—

genesis III  
(_a.k.a. that time you told my fortune_)

The carnival was coming to life, even as the day died. Lamps flickered bright light across the rides; done up in bright-colour incandescent bulbs, themselves.

Sasuke rolled his eyes. He was very annoyed by his friends, sometimes. Naruto was bouncing around, eyes childishly wide, hands full of all the delights that a carnival could bring, And it was Naruto (and Naruto's _stupid ideas_) that talked Sasuke into having his fortune told.

The gypsy wagons were colourful, painted boxed in the sun's fading half-light. Sasuke shoved his hands in his pockets, and made his way over towards them, Naruto bouncing along at his side.

A girl stood at the entrance, between the wagons and the tents, a little father behind. She was short, and she seemed to smile a lot. Pink hair. Sasuke snorted.

She looked at him, eyes half-lidded and dark, luminescent green. When she spoke, her voice was tinged with camp-fire smoke and mysticism. "So, you want your fortune told?"

Sasuke shifted a little, uncomfortable. Naruto answered for him. "Yeah, he does!"

"Cards, then?" she asked, as she held a pack of ornate tarot cards up.

Sasuke nodded slowly.

"I'm Sakura," she said.

She turned, and headed towards one of the wagons, emblazoned with some very intricate Celtic knot work, and a waterfall of cards. Sasuke thought some of them moved; flickers of life on the simple, dark wood.

"Sit down," she mumbled as they stepped inside, and vaguely indicated a chair. The inside of the wagon was hung with garlands of fresh flowers, and little else but candles, for light. The table was simple, and Sasuke sat.

Sakura held the cards gently, and Sasuke watched, bored, as she spread them carefully across the table.

"Pick three," she told him.

Sasuke chose three at random. He was annoyed (read: he was never going to let Naruto talk him into something like this, _again_).

"Lay them out in front of you, left to right, in the order you chose them," she said, again.

Sasuke did not like this _being told what to do_ business, but she did as he said, anyway. One, two, three; he placed them in a line, the gilded red backs of each card glimmering up at him.

She flipped them, then. One, two, three; three pictures faced up at him. They meant absolutely nothing, but Sakura was frowning.

"All major arcana… You know powerful people, am I correct?"

Sasuke's jaw twitched, and Sakura smiled.

"Thought so. This," she gestured at the spread, "is you. Your past. The Death card. Something's changed, recently, hasn't it? Something—_changed_. And it's upside down."

She paused, and pursed her lips. "Whatever it was, you're stewing over it, and you shouldn't. Things end. Things begin. Death is the bringer of change, and it's not always a bad thing, you know."

Sasuke said nothing. He thought of Naruto's wedding, and hated everything.

She smiled in the half-light. "Anyway, on to the next. Present. The magician. Huh."

"What?"

"It's just… It's upright. You know how to find the things you want, and to actually get your hands on them. Witty. Generally, you're an intelligent person. Actually, you're probably a little too smart for your own good, and a little arrogant."

Sasuke glared, and Sakura threw back her head and laughed.

"Thought so."

"Just…"

"Get on with it?"

"_Sakura_," he growled.

The stomach convulsing sense of _knowing_ hit him like a punch in the gut.

She continued. "And this last one, future—this is The Lovers."

Sasuke was flabbergasted.

Sakura smiled, again. "Not like that, silly. It just means you're going to have a difficult choice to make, in the near future. It doesn't _necessarily_ have anything to do with love."

But Sasuke knew it did.

They looked at each other for a moment, and Sasuke found himself inexorably drawn to her. She wasn't beautiful, in the traditional sense of beauty. Not really, anyway, with dark green eyes and exotic pink hair.

"Well," she said, "that's it."

Sasuke nodded, and stood up.

"Goodbye," he told her simply, and left the wagon.

(They were never to see each other again. Later, Sasuke would sometimes think that he'd made that choice right then and there.

He had walked away.)

—

genesis IV  
(_a.k.a. that time i played an ocarina_)

They were just children, and that was the problem. Twelve year olds ought not be saving the world.

They called her Sakura, and he'd heard of her, before.

She was the Princess, and he was just some boy who knew how to swing a sword around, but she looked at him, that day, in that private garden, like he was something that could save them all.

Sasuke looked at Sakura like she was the only thing worth saving.

But she didn't need to know that.

"We'll stop him," she laughed, fervent. "We'll stop him together! You—please, Sasuke, you have to find the stones, and then we'll open the Door of Time, and we'll get to the Triforce before Orochimaru does, and—"

Sasuke just nodded. He kind of thought she was pretty, when she smiled.

"I'll take care of the Ocarina. He won't get it as long as I'm alive, and I'm sure that's going to be for a very long time… So hurry! Go with Kakashi, he'll get you out of here, because if the guards find you—"

He nodded again. "That could be bad."

"Yeah, it could be."

They nodded at each other, determined. Sasuke turned to leave.

"Oh, wait!"

Sasuke turned around just in time to catch Sakura on the fly. Her arms went around his neck in a very tight hug, and she murmured "Good luck! I know you can do it!"

Sasuke flushed. He knew he wouldn't see her again for a very long time, but still.

He had to save this place, for her.

(When he did save it for her, though, it turned out she was some sort of mystical Sage. She had to stay in the Divine Realm, and protect it from Orochimaru, even though he'd been sealed away. And not only that. She was still a Princess, and Sasuke was still just some kid who could swing a sword around.

Sakura was magic, and Sasuke never stood a chance.)

—

genesis V  
(_a.k.a. that time you told a thousand tales_)

Sakura sat in the midst of cashmere, satin and jewels, a twinkling veil across her face, and lustrous silk pantaloons, the picture of perfection.

"Tell us a story," a quiet voice commanded.

She bowed from the waist, in the direction of the quiet voice, and began.

"Once, there was a girl…"

He had watched her for a long time, listened to her stories for even longer. They'd grown up together, the darling little prince and the gimped storyteller's daughter.

"…who lived in a world much like our own…"

He had loved her for even longer.

"…This is her story."

(But he was married to someone else, and Sasuke was never the sort of person to break tradition.

He would not touch her, this life.)

—

genesis VI  
(_a.k.a. that time i used a light__saber_)

They were in training together, two padawan children preparing to take the tests that would allow them to become full-fledged Jedi.

Sasuke had come to Coruscant, to the Order, as a child, full of grief over murders that he never could have prevented had he tried. An unhappy child.

And she…

Sakura was different than Sasuke was. She was a happy girl, from Naboo. Strong with the Force, from what Sasuke had heard from Master Yoda. But oddly unsure of herself. And—she was—

Well, pretty much everything Sasuke had ever wanted and yet could never, ever have.

Her saber, when she received it, was a vibrant aquamarine colour. Sasuke thought it matched her personality perfectly, and it took more will then he possessed to not allow her to throw her arms around him, and whisper-scream "We did it, we did, _we did it_, Sasuke-kun, _we did it_!" in his ear.

For once, he allowed himself to carefully lace his own arms around her, and hug her back.

(From over his shoulder, he could see Anakin Skywalker giving him a look. There was dark there, in the other man's eyes, and Sasuke knew, then, that there would be death, that night.

He almost kissed Sakura, but before he could touch her lips, they both blinked out of existence.

He had always wanted to die with the taste of her on his lips.)

—

genesis VII  
(_a.k.a. that time i almost stole you away on the dark of the ocean_)

Sasuke looked out over the edge of the ship, towards the horizon, a frown etched across his face. The sky was dark, boiling with angry black-purple-green clouds.

"It's going to storm," Sasuke observed, disturbed.

Naruto, behind him, nodded. "Aye."

"If we get thrown…"

"Get Sakura-chan to safety?"

"Yes."

"Fine. Teme, do you really think you should be letting her marry someone else?"

Sasuke was quiet for a long moment.

"Go talk to her, Teme."

For once, Sasuke managed to take Naruto's advice, and descended the ships levels, down to the deep bowels of the ship, to the most luxurious room, currently housing the Irish princess, Sakura.

Green eyes glowed from the depths of the room, and Sasuke took a bow. "Lady Sakura," he murmured.

"Sasuke-kun," she replied, formality laced into her words. The words sounded all wrong coming out of her mouth, and something in Sasuke's stomach clenched and rebelled.

She was beautiful.

And she was his brother's war-prize bride.

Sasuke knew he had no right to her.

"We will reach Cornwall within the day."

"Ah, thank you. It will be good to—see the sun, again."

They both could hear the reluctance in her voice. Sasuke remembered being in the dark of a cave, and her lips, petal-soft, and so close…

And then she was just as close, as before, and Sasuke's fingers itched to pull her close, keep her close, keep her protected, forever.

Her hands were on his face. "Do you love me, Sasuke-kun?"

Sasuke clenched his hands at his side. Brother's war-prize bride, brother's war-prize bride, he had no _right_…

"No, m'Lady."

"…Are you sure?"

"Yes, m'Lady."

He heard her gulp. "I see. Leave my presence, please. I no longer want to hear you speak."

"Yes, m'Lady."

Sasuke pulled away, and left the cabin.

(He watched them marry, and then threw himself off a cliff.

He wasn't to know she wasn't far behind.)

—

genesis VIII  
(_a.k.a. that time there was glitter painted on your skin_)

Normal family parties were not like this.

But then, the Haruno family had never particularly been the most normal of families.

The mass of bodies writhed in the dim light, sparkle-filters of fluorescent coloured light dancing across the scarcely clothed.

Haruno family parties-which-were-actually-supposed-to-be-reunions-but-never-actually-were usually ended up being simply a viable excuse to get hammered and break shit, or so Sakura had discovered over the course of her life. It wasn't like they had anything better to do, anyway.

Rich people were dreadful, like that.

Sakura threw back her head, and laughed. Heated breath on her ear, voice in the dark. "Sa-Sakura, Sakura!"

"Hm?"

"There's a boy here."

"There are _lots_ of boys, here, Hinata," Sakura muttered back, and danced out of the weak grip someone had on one of her hips.

"N-no, Sakura," and Hinata's's gleamed with something Sakura knew and feared—the obsessive mixture of fear and mirth that made up Hinata's personality. "I m-mean an _Uchiha_ b-boy."

Sakura giggled, bubbled of laughter popping in her throat. "Don't be silly. You know that's pretty much a death-sentence. The only one who'd do that is—"

"It _is_ him."

"…Take me there. I want to watch Karin kill him."

Hinata shook her head, long strands of dark blue in her face. "I—I'm going to m-make sure your father d-doesn't find him, o-or something…"

Sakura laughed. "F_iiiiiiiii_ne."

Hinata disappeared into the crowd of people, and Sakura went for a walk.

(_"You know, I honestly didn't think you were this stupid."_

"_Hn."_

"_You know that this is my engagement party, right?"_

"_Hn."_

"_We messed up, Sasuke-kun. We messed up again."_)

—

genesis IX  
(_a.k.a. that time you moved away_)

"I'm leaving tomorrow."

"Hn."

"…Aren't you going to say anything else?"

"No."

Sakura felt her heart shatter.

"Oh. Oh. Uhm. Okay then. Bye."

—

genesis X  
(_a.k.a. that time we watched the sun rise_)

"We should be dead."

"We should."

"But we aren't."

"No, Sakura, we're not."

"How does that work?"

"Hn."

Sakura and Sasuke sat in the middle of field full of bodies, back to back. Bloody steel, late night, early morning, shredded clothing.

"I hope Naruto's okay," Sakura murmured, exhaustion sinking into her soul like spilt sake, and Sakura thought of Tsunade and family and duty and the boy at her back.

"He's too stupid to die," came the quiet reply.

"You're probably right. Hey, Sasuke-kun…"

"Hn?"

"Do you ever think you're going to come home? Because that's what this is all about. All this death, this pointless, _pointless_ death… It's down to you. You know that… right?"

Sakura felt the movement as he shook his head. She had kind of expected that. The soft green glow of healing chakra enveloped them both, warm and comforting and strong; everything that Sakura strived to be.

Sasuke knew that.

But he could sense the trepidation, underneath it all; the insecurity.

He clenched his teeth.

"Pointless death. So much, _so much pointless death_, Sasuke-kun. Is that what you want?" she asked, softly, then, and stood up, weak on wobbly knees.

It was never what he wanted.

"So what do we do, Sakura?"

Sakura shrugged, standing, as the sky began to lighten. "I don't know. What _do_ you do?"

What _did_ he do?

The sun broke over the trees, and dazzled them both. Sasuke stood, then, too, slowly and deliberately.

Sakura, in dawn sunlight, he thought, was very… something. Something… _different_. The sun hit her hair and scattered around her face. Level brows, pert nose, and jaded eyes… Sakura was different.

(Not beautiful, because Sakura was not the conventional sort of beauty, per-say; she was simply different.)

"…I go with you."

"Do you? And what gives you the idea that I want you to come with me?"

He just stared at her, and, slowly stated "You… I can't tell you what you want, Sakura. But–"

"That's true," she murmured, and brushed her hair out of her eyes. "But what _do_ you want, Sasuke-kun? Because I know what _I_ want."

"And that is…?"

She smiled, and shrugged, skin pale in the light, a tremble of fatigue running up and down her spine—he could see it.

"I want to go home," she said.

He blinked, and nodded.

"Yeah. I want that, too."

Sakura nodded, and a tiny smile broke over her face. "Then let's go home, okay?"

"Hn," he murmured back.

She stretched out a hand, palm-up, across the almost-insurmountable distance between them. Sasuke stood, frozen, for a moment. And then he carefully reached out, and carefully wrapped her fingers in his.

They watched the sun rise, standing together, quietly waiting for life to begin.

(Because one night can change everything—and happy endings aren't always easy, for people like us.)

—

.

.

.

.

.

_fin_.

**notes4**: SO I GRADUATED. BIZNITCH.**  
notes5**: also, this monster of a one-shot is FINALLY finished. WHOOHOO.


	19. bioshock baby

**disclaimer**: _hiss_.  
**dedication**: to a sickening lack of sleep and a mostly innocuous amount of caffeine.  
**notes**: i feel like a zombie. this is not a new experience. catch the video game reference.  
**notes2**: i'm _so_ ADD, people. help?  
**notes3**: dead zone live wire bioshock baby, but idk how much is between them. =D

**title**: bioshock baby  
**summary**: I want to die with the sun on my face, Sasuke-kun. — Sasuke/Sakura; 19/5o.

—

.

.

.

.

.

Sakura looked down at the bright Underland city. Konoha. That was what the Underlanders called it.

It was a big city. A big city full of dreams and ropes and hopes and ideals, and people, too.

But it never slept.

There was always light.

It never slept, and so neither did Sakura. Swinging high above that never-sleeping city, curled in a chameleon mock-fibre hammock, the TRF girl watched it glitter with gothic-lace elegance, dark and tantalizing. Beautiful.

Yes, beautiful.

But the war wasn't over yet. Not yet.

She looked up at the inverted black bowl that was an Underlander's sky. Her hammock was attached to two STARS (SynThetic Artificial Radiance Sparks); the bright bulbs almost blinded her as she stared at them. Sakura winced, and blinked the bright-spots out of her vision.

Another fake night.

Another fake night, without real stars.

She reached up, and scalpeled through the imitation cloth. The sound of ripping fabric was silent.

Sakura fell through the sky.

—

It was almost midnight, and Sakura sat next to Sasuke, and was perfectly content to watch the world burn.

And it would, one day.

So they sat there in the flickering light of the tiny bonfire, a dark-colour boy and a bright-colour girl, wraiths of smoke in the dark of Underland's night time, shadows of their future selves.

Sakura turned her face towards Sasuke, and smiled her razor-smile. She said "Not long, now."

Sasuke inclined his head an inch, enough that Sakura knew that he understood, but not enough for anyone else to ever see that he had made a noteworthy acceptance of her words.

But Sakura was Sakura, and she knew Sasuke.

She blew shaggy pink hair out of her eyes. "Huh," she mumbled "I should probably get Karin to fix my hair…"

"Someone found her?"

Sakura bit out a laugh, and Sasuke almost wanted to flinch. She only laughed like that when something was bothering her. "Yeah. But she's not… the same."

"She was Topside for…?"

"Almost six weeks."

The unspoken _I'm amazed she's alive_, hung between them, and Sasuke clenched his fists. At this rate, Sakura was going to get ideas, and that was never a good thing.

Every time Sakura got ideas, people had this tendency to _die_.

"Sasuke-kun, I got into SparkShack's headquarters, last night."

"Hn?"

"Bioshock, baby. They're starting all over, again."

"…_What_?"

Sakura ran her hands through greasy hair. "Yup. You'd think they'd have learned, by now. They'll turn this dead place into something _breathing_."

Sasuke looked at her. There was something about the way that her mouth curved up, right then, that had Sasuke thinking that she wasn't quite against whatever it was they were working on, at SparkShack.

"God, I can't even wait."

"It's taboo," Sasuke said, slowly.

"So?"

And it was true. The Underlander population were still so terrified of the experiments that Topside's scientists had worked on. It was to the point that the (dwindling) number of Topside residents, in Underland, were shunned from society. It was to the point that they preferred the certain death that Topside promised than the ostracization that came with living below.

And Sakura and Sasuke were in the midst of it all.

"Its funny, you know?" Sakura asked, softly. "Because Karin told me that's how it started, Topside, too. Little bit at a time; genetic food modification, at first, just baby steps. And then it built up. Tolerance."

Sasuke said nothing.

"And then it led to this."

Sakura eyes glimmered with the dull happiness that was revenge. "And maybe it'll start that way again. It's not like Underland has an unlimited food supply, Sasuke-kun."

He watched her wrap her arms around her knees, skin paler then usual in the rare, natural firelight.

She was exquisite.

But she looked very, very far away, shivering violently when the fire flickered a certain way. Sasuke shifted closer to her, as another shudder tore through her, and he slid an arm around thin shoulders.

Sakura looked up, and smiled her razor-smile at him, jagged edges of cut-glass mirror shards in her eyes.

"Thanks," was all she murmured, and Sasuke inclined his head barely an inch.

"Bioshock, baby," she whispered, again, reverence in her tone.

Sasuke had a feeling that the whole world was about to change.

The two children-almost-adults sat in the smoke in the dark, under the black dome of the sky, and the STARS glimmer in a sad, unconvincing way.

—

"_So, Sasuke-kun…"_

"_Hn?"_

"_What do we do now?"_

"_Hn."_

"_You have to work on that communicating thing."_

"…"

"_Hey."_

"_Hn?"_

"_Stop looking so depressed. We're all going to die, anyway. Karin's already half-way there."_

"…"

"_Hold me, please."_

—

The black-market cigarette burned a tendril of smoke, reaching toward the sky. Sakura was standing on a roof in the middle of Konoha, and the STAR that made up Underland's sun burnt bright and vivid and _alive_. The streets swarmed with people—so many people. Underlanders, mostly.

Sakura really hated them.

She almost wanted to let them experience the horror that was Topside; she wanted them to _understand_.

But she knew that they wouldn't.

She took another drag on the cigarette.

("_I know it's going to kill me, Sasuke-kun. But really. What __**isn't**__ going to kill me?_")

—

Every minute was like a day, when Sakura was around, Sasuke found.

"Chaos is such an attractive sound," she said, and gave him that razor-smile, teeth shining pearl-white glints against the red of her mouth. He watched Sakura tap her nose, tapered fingers ending in bronze-painted nails.

The pale blue steel underneath her skin flashed in the STARlight, and Sasuke had an urge to gather her into his arms, and protect her from the world.

Sakura was volatile, at best.

She needed protecting.

She yawned, and stretched, and Sasuke watched the way her body moved, for a moment. The line of her throat, vulnerable, down past her breast, across her torso, her hips, along her legs…

It would be easy to kill her, if he ever had the notion.

(Slit her throat, break her bones; sometimes, Sakura trusted too easily, even when she didn't. But, then, Sasuke didn't like thinking things like that.)

Konoha was far below them, and the look of concentration on Sakura's face worried him.

"Sakura."

"Hmn?"

"What are you doing?"

She just grinned, and shrugged. "Nothing much, Sasuke-kun. I'm just trying to figure out a way to get a Topsider down here. Pretty things, you know."

Sasuke glared.

"Sa-ku-ra," he muttered.

"Sa-su-ke-kun," she smiled back, hands on her legging-clad hips. She gestured down at Konoha. "They've never seen the sun, Sasuke-kun—" she broke off, and held up a hand. "Not the _real_ sun. Not the sun that burns Topside."

"They never will, Sakura," Sasuke said, gruff, hands stuffed in his pockets.

He understood that she wanted the world to burn. It was every coherent Topsider's wish; to see Underland lit with real sun.

She looked at him, then, a far-away look in her eyes.

"I don't care what it takes."

"Hn?"

"I want to die with the sun on my face, Sasuke-kun."

—

"Blood is all the same. Did you know?" Sakura ground out through her teeth.

Topside patrol, again.

The dark-haired boy-almost-man said nothing, hand pressed against the bleeding hole in his thigh. Someone had told him, once, that if the femoral artery was somehow severed, a person would bleed out in four minutes.

He hoped they were wrong.

"Don't you die on me, Sasuke-kun. You _can't_ die on me, I won't _let_ you die on me, I won't, I won't, _I won't—_"

"Sakura."

And she was quiet.

"Everyone wants to die with the sun on their face," he said. His voice was so quiet, she bent over to hear the breath of air that was his voice.

She was close enough to kiss.

Sasuke raised bloody fingers, and pulled Sakura's face down towards his. "Don't die," he muttered crazily, and kissed her, fierce and hot and tired and in pain.

Topside's sun flared wildly in the sky, and a life on the ground was snuffed out.

Sakura sat next to his body for three hours, and died with the sun on her face.

("_Bioshock, baby…_")

—

.

.

.

.

.

_fin_.

**notes4**: i kind of always knew that this one wasn't going to have a happy ending. wut.  
**notes5**: BUT WHY DID IT HAVE TO GO SO EMO? reviews and cake = love.


	20. hey beautiful

**disclaimer**: on nom nom.  
**dedication**: to les and sugar and pretty boys and AMERICA/CANADA, HOLY FUCK, MAN.  
**notes**: DID ANYONE ELSE SEE GLEE AND FLAIL AS MUCH AS I DID? OMFG. i might be slightly obsessed with America/Canada from APH. just maybe. (COMPLETELY, TOTALLY OBSESSED.)  
**notes2**: also, i dislike clothes. possibly a sequel to "barbie girl"? idk, i doubt it.

**title**: hey beautiful  
**summary**: She stepped out of the bathroom, a trail of sweet perfume and bad decisions in heels. "You were the last good thing about that place, Sakura." — Sasuke/Sakura; 2o/5o.

—

.

.

.

.

.

"Tonight? I've got plans, tonight, Sasuke!"

They were facing off over breakfast, again. Sasuke sat behind the carefully constructed curtain of grace that was his newspaper. Sakura stood and glared at him from across the table, hands on her hips. The room bristled with barely-restrained abhorrence.

"Yes, Sakura, tonight."

Sakura struggled not to snap at him.

"Sasuke, I told Ino I'd be able to make it to her Bachelorette party. I am _not_ giving that up to go to another function with _you_!"

Sasuke said nothing, preferring to hide his face behind the silence wall of his newspaper.

A pin dropped in the distance.

Sakura, green eyes blazing, stood still, hands glued to her hips. She whipped around, pink hair dancing behind her, and stomped towards the front door.

"I'm going to _work_," she half-screamed, and slammed the door behind her.

Sasuke, still sitting at the table, smiled.

Sakura was so beautiful when she was angry.

—

Sakura stood in the penthouse office of the Haruno-Uchiha Corp. (it satisfied her to no end that her name came first) headquarters building, trying to gather her thoughts. She was still too angry to think clearly—too angry to work, too angry to deal, too angry to _breathe_.

He was so damn _ignorant_.

She seethed.

Fury hissed through her veins. Sakura stood there, looking out through the floor-to-ceiling windows of her corner office. She stood there, and stared otwards, towards the sky-scrapers of Konoha's down-town.

Ugly city.

It was an ugly city, as ugly as the anger that was fizzing so pleasantly underneath her skin, in fact. As ugly as the thunderclouds that hung thickly across the sky, right then. Ugly.

Five million miles down, the pavement was wet, glistening dully. The sun tired to break through the cloud-cover, and failed. Sasuke wasn't coming in.

Sakura smiled a close-lipped smile.

The day was looking up.

—

"I don't know, Ino…"

"_But you **promised,** Sakura_!" Ino's voice sounded hurt as it screeched through the phone speaker, sad. "_It's not like this is going to happen again! I swore I'd only get married once, and **this**_ _is_ **_it_!"**

Sakura sighed, and rubbed her temples. She'd been dreading this talk, all day. Because, quite frankly, well…

Because, quite frankly, it would be a choice between Ino and Sasuke. It was _the_ choice between Ino and Sasuke. The choice between her friendships, and the company that had been Sakura's father's lifework.

Static crackled.

And then Sakura made a snorting noise at the back of her throat.

How was this even a question, again?

"Never mind, Ino, I'm just being crazy. Of course I'll be there."

Ino was silent, for a moment. "_…It's Sasuke, again, isn't it? That's what's brought this on. What did he do now_?"

The sarcasm on Sakura's voice was palpable. "What gives you _that_ impression, Ino? The fact that I can't stand to be in his presence more then five minutes at a time? Or the fact that he purposefully does things that he _knows_ will tick me off?"

Ino just laughed a bell-laugh, and said "_Then we're still on for tonight_?"

"Yeah, definitely."

"_Good. I'll see you later. Gotta get my skank on—it'll be the last time! Love you, baaai_!"

Sakura smiled into the receiver. She could see Ino wiggling her fingers in a contrary goodbye—_so_ Ino. Sakura mentally thanked her for her stability, and sang out a reply just in time, before the Ino clicked the phone off.

The line disconnected, and Sakura felt very alone.

—

_Click-clack. Click-clack. Click-clack_.

And Sakura was on her way home, stiletto heels clacking purposefully against the still-wet pavement. The sun was setting; the sky was an oil-painted canvas smeared blue-red-purple-black, and Konoha's night-life was starting to wake, and _move_.

Sakura could still remember what it was like, to want that.

She slid her old favourite aviators across her face, and watched the world turn dark.

(_I wear my sunglasses at night_…)

—

Sasuke was sitting on the couch.

Actually, Sakura observed coolly, he was sprawled on the couch, legs thrown at various angles, face hidden under that damn newspaper.

Sakura didn't acknowledge his presence.

"The function starts in an hour."

"That's nice."

"Get dressed."

"I've got plans."

"I know."

"Not with you, Sasuke."

And Sakura smiled a sweet-venom-sugar smile in his general, and grabbed a black-shirt-white-silk-shirt ensemble, and slipped into the bathroom. As she turned, she caught that damn smirk of his, peeking out from beneath the paper.

The door slammed behind her.

Sakura hated everything about him, and started to do her hair. Straightner curls, foundation, blush, eye-lash curler, mascara, eye-liner, shadow smudged into the corners of jade eyes; so lovely. She stood in front of the mirror, and surveyed her reflection. She was reminded of a far-away time with Ino and Karin, and other late nights, and maybe a wedding dress shoved into the back of a closet.

A sigh escaped Sakura's lips, and she brushed carefully-curled strands of pink out of her line of vision.

Yes, this would suffice.

She stepped out of the bathroom, a trail of sweet perfume and bad decisions in heels.

Patent leather heels.

Sakura liked patent leather.

With a swish of pink hair, Sakura grabbed her keys, and called over her shoulder, smile flashing fresh-blood red against the white of her teeth, "Bye, Sasuke! I'm not coming home, see ya!"

The door closed, and Sasuke growled.

He hated that she'd learned how to get to him.

—

Sakura's idea of a good time was a quiet evening in front of a roaring fire with a good book, wrapped up in a thick wool blanket, with a cup of hot cocoa.

_This_ was not Sakura's idea of a good time.

The club was smoky and dark; pounding music had Sakura's whole frame vibrating along to the bass line. A flash of golden hair was Ino, laughing, a strawberry martini in hand, arm around—was that Hinata? Karin was around there, somewhere, and Temari—

Sakura was on the dance floor, ground up against some marginally attractive man.

The guy's hands were curled around her hips, heated lips against her throat, and, despite everything every thing (the heat, the alcohol, the crazy), Sakura still felt—dirty. Was that even the right word? Dirty. Perhaps.

She shot a dewy glance up at the marginally attractive man, stood up on tiptoe, and murmured in his ear "I'm going to get a drink."

He just nodded, dazed and confused from the music and the alcohol and the pounding beat.

And Sakura made her escape.

She headed towards the bar, weaving through the staggering drunks (lightweights, it wasn't even eleven), and shot the bartender a look.

"What'cha want, sweetheart?" he shouted over the din.

"Bloody Mary. Make it strong." Sakura yelled in reply. There, that would put in a lovely, quiet mood. If she was lucky, she'd even be able to deal with all of Sasuke's _shit_, when she got home.

The bartender slid Sakura her drink and a shot of tequila to go with it. When she raised an eyebrow at him, he just shrugged, and pointed across the bar.

Sakura stared at the shot of tequila for moment. And then she grinned, grabbed the shot, and raised it in the general direction that he'd pointed. She'd never really liked tequila—it was pretty nasty, and gave her the worst hang-overs _ever_… but, eh, whatever.

And then she knocked the burning liquid down her throat.

—

Three hours later, Sakura stumbled into someone, laughing like a maniac.

She clutched at whoever it was' shirt, and buried her nose that person's neck. She stayed there, pressed against him (him? No boobs… him), and giggled into the juncture of his throat.

She felt him sigh, and arms wrapped around her waist.

"I'm taking you home," came the exasperated voice.

Sakura said nothing, and rested her forehead there.

It wasn't like whoever it was was Sasuke.

So Sakura didn't care.

—

"Does your head hurt?"

"I hate you _so much_."

Sakura was never going to drink again.

(Riiiiiiiight.)

She held her head. The room was spinning. That was not good. Sakura felt nauseous.

_Never. Drinking. Again_.

(…Riiiiiiiight.)

"Here," the familiar voice muttered, and Sakura found a couple of pills and a cup of water shoved into her grip.

She didn't even care that this was coming from Sasuke.

(They would go back to hating each other tomorrow.)

She felt him reach over, and he helped her sit up. She knocked the pills back, gulped the water, and, for thirty seconds, let him cradle her. It was a nice feeling. Sakura closed her eyes, and for those thirty seconds, they actually had a normal marriage. They were actually _normal_.

Then Sakura realized exactly what was going on, and was revolted with herself.

"You can lemme go, now," she mumbled at him, and Sasuke snapped his arms away from her.

And Sakura understood, yet again, that _this_ was why they hated each other.

"Sasuke… How did I—get home?"

Sasuke snorted. "I brought you home."

"…Really."

"You are here, correct?"

Sakura tried to glare at him, and failed miserably. Everything hurt too much, and Sakura was strangely sure that if she tried anything mentally exhausting, she was going to vomit. So she uttered a single word, instead.

"Why?"

Sasuke was quiet for some time.

"You're the last good thing about this place, Sakura. Go back to sleep."

Sakura closed her eyes. She felt his hand against her forehead.

She almost smiled.

—

.

.

.

.

.

_fin_.

**notes3**: SCOTTY DOESN'T KNOW, DON'T TELL SCOTTY. :D  
**notes4**: this was a totally pointless piece of work, i apologize. it was me de-stressing.


	21. no way home

**disclaimer**: om nom nom  
**dedication**: to summer days, summer nights, and 3OH!3. also les+sonya. but that's like a given, yo.  
**notes**: idk where this shit came from. Idk what it even _is_.  
**notes2**: i now have a job. it'll severely cut into my writing time (or lack thereof). fack.

**title**: no way home  
**summary**: In a world without time, there is a place with wooden docks that run to nowhere, and there are empty-eyed girls and boys that are trapped in an endless world of water. They stand on the edge, and quietly watch the moon rise. — Sasuke/Sakura; 21/5o.

—

.

.

.

.

.

Sakura dipped her feet in the water.

The reflection of the sky blurred among the waves, the fresh water dyed golden with the dying sunlight. The wood of the dock beneath her was silver with age, smooth and worn from years of feet pushing off, into the freedom of the air, and wishing they wouldn't fall.

The chill of the water crept up her legs, delicate swirls of cold, and Sakura shivered.

Sasuke was gone, again. Searching for food, most likely, and Sakura wasn't worried. There was no where to go. There was no escaping this place.

It wasn't like they hadn't tried.

But Sakura didn't even really know where "this place" was. Not really. Time didn't pass the same way, in this place, as it did in the rest of the world. The rest of the outside world, rather. Moments were years, and Sakura had yet to have age lines grace her face.

(She'd stopped counting the years a long time ago—it wasn't worth it. The marks on the silver branches of trees would go on to eternity.)

She was seventeen forever.

"Sakura," came a familiar voice from behind her back. Sakura twisted her body around to look at where the noise was coming from.

Sasuke was still as attractive as ever. Sakura smiled over her shoulder at him, and gently patted the spot on the dock next to her.

He sat, and they faded into the woodwork like ghosts.

—

"_They say that the island's haunted."_

"_Which island?"_

"_The one out in the middle of the bay. It's always covered in mist, so no one can see it. And the adults say it's __**haunted**__."_

"_Why do they say that?"_

"_Dunno. But something crashed there, a long time ago. And some people say that the kids on the island at the time—well, they say that those kids didn't die. They say that something weird happened to them."_

"_Weird?"_

"_Really weird. Never-grow-up weird."_

"_Like Peter Pan?"_

"_Maybe. But the adults always get creeped out when they talk about it. Sometimes, they say they hear laughter over the water. And no one goes out there, anymore."_

"_What? Why not?"_

"_Too dangerous. No one can get close. My dad tried, last year, and he nearly drowned."_

"_That's… weird."_

"_Yeah. Weird."_

—

There was nothing that really kept them there, Sakura mused, sometimes. No physical barriers.

But the water went on forever, and anyone who tried to swim away ended up back at shore, confused, disoriented, and forever swimming in circles.

She had found, a long time ago, that it was better to sit on the beach in the sun, and to enjoy the never-ending summer days, the never-ending summer nights. She would never tan; she had come to this place pale, and pale she would stay.

Far-away laughter floated on the breeze across the cove, and Sakura distantly wondered where her friends had got to—what were the others doing? Pinpricks of light glimmered across the water in a crescendo of familiarity, and Sakura smiled.

Sakura stretched out against old wood and the debris of a long-ago plane crash, charred metal still smoking, and stared at the dark blue sky, stars twinkling brightly.

Things didn't change, here.

It didn't matter how much time had passed, or how many sun's had risen and set.

None of it mattered, and Sakura and Sasuke were left to rebuild someone else's relationships.

The docks ran into the water, the sun had set, and the moon began to rise.

Sasuke stood above her, and looked out over the water. The waves glittered, scattering diamonds of moonlight around them both.

Sakura listened to the symphony of water lapping at the shoreline, and started to laugh.

"Why are you laughing?" Sasuke asked, and Sakura shrugged.

"Because there's nothing else to do, I guess," she told him, and he nodded, eyes never leaving the horizon.

They both wanted to escape.

But they never would.

—

Trapped, they were always trapped. There was no escaping this place—no escaping the stasis. There was _no escape_. No walls held them, but the water ran forever, and the horizon might as well have not existed, because the sky and water blurred, until no matter where anyone looked, it was always blue, blue, _blue_.

Sakura didn't always mind that, though. Blue was kind of nice.

There was a house, up on the hill, made of glass. And sometimes, when the sun hit it right, it turned into a fireball of light, burning and burning and burning.

No one knew how it had got there; the knowledge was lost to time (again), but it was what it was.

The piano inside was ebony and ivory, and during the night, once in a while, Sakura would lean against Sasuke and listen to someone play a haunting, sad melody.

It was always the same melody, slow and sad, and beautiful, so beautiful, and private, in a way, because no one disturbed the pianist.

For that matter, no one even knew who the pianist was.

Sakura didn't really want to find out.

Even the melody stayed the same.

Nothing changed.

—

"Do you think we're ever going to die here, Sasuke-kun?"

"No. Not here."

"I don't think so, either."

Sakura ran her fingers over the old wood. Smooth, soft, to the touch. She'd traced her name on those wooden boards, her ink nothing more then water, over and over again, hoping against hope that one day, the letters might stay.

But they never did, and Sakura was left with the impression that nothing could change.

It wasn't a particularly _happy_ impression, but an impression it was, all the same. Sakura was, yet again, oddly content to lie next to Sasuke, forever-eighteen Sasuke, and watch the night sky fly over her head.

And she loved him, she did. She'd loved him for longer then she could remember—she had loved him longer then anything. She'd loved him so long; time had stolen away the memories of how it had happened, how they had met, who they used to be.

Time had stolen much (too much) from Sakura; the memories of her childhood, who she used to be, even her parents—she knew she must have had them, once, but it was so long ago that a thick film of dust had settled over the recollections. Sakura had no memory of them.

But that didn't matter, because in the end, Sakura still loved Sasuke in a fierce, desperate way that she'd never been able to rationalize.

Love endured.

Sakura understood that.

She stretched towards the sky, her thoughts a whirl of stars, more then half-forgotten melodies, and spider-like cobwebs of exhaustion. She doesn't remember when she last slept, really slept, but she doesn't really care.

In a world where there was no time, sleep was the last thing on the list of priorities.

The moon had hit it's peak, and shone platinum in the sky. A hanging disc of silver, Sakura's world was awash in the colours of the night. The moonlight turned everything into dripping shadows, black and silver and white and navy, in the dark.

Sakura smiled, and turned her head to look at Sasuke.

He had been created to be in moonlight, she mused.

The hard-smooth press of wood beneath her cheek reminded her of—of—of something, something from a long time ago, from before there was this place, before there was the never-ending water.

But not before Sasuke, because Sakura knew, as assuredly as she knew that she existed, that there had been nothing, _nothing_, before Sasuke.

And she would tell him that, one day.

But not tonight.

Because it wasn't like they didn't have all the time in the world.

Sakura smiled, strange and slow and white in the moonlight, and closed her eyes.

—

The next morning, Sakura blinked, and found herself awash in sunshine.

"Good morning, Sasuke," she told him quietly, as she sat up.

He spared her smile a look, and smirked.

Sakura tilted her head, and wondered about the complexities of the world. Who was this boy who she loved so very desperately?

Sakura knew, then, that she wasn't ever to know.

Nothing ever changed.

Even the whole world—in the dark, it _looked_ different, but it wasn't, not really. The colours changed, but the water was still water, and the land was still land. The glass house was still glass, and the piano still played in the distance.

And even though the world, during the day, was an explosion of colour—pale white-yellow sand, blue water, blue sky, green foliage, silver-grey docks—it was still just another part of Sakura's never-changing world.

And it was beautiful, that way.

"Good morning," he said quietly.

The world tilted on its axis, and Sakura stared at him. He never replied to her greetings, never, never, as long as she could remember–

"Sasuke—" Sakura started to say.

But then he leaned over her. His lips caught hers for the briefest of seconds.

And Sakura, for the first time in a long time, was able to remember why she loved Sasuke.

—

.

.

.

.

.

_fin_.

**notes3**: i like it. drop a review if you did, too.  
**notes4**: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, CANADA. :D


	22. white sparrows

**disclaimer**: nuh-uh.  
**dedication**: wow, to One Night Only, for being my modern-day Beatles.  
**notes**: procrastination, how i love thee…  
**notes2**: summer is just. beautiful. also, this piece is nostalgic because… idk why.

**title**: white sparrows  
**summary**: Email me dirty pictures of you with my name in marker everywhere, because I get crazy thinking about your eyes when you cry. I miss you all wrong, Sakura. — Sasuke/Sakura; 22/5o.

—

.

.

.

.

.

University was both Sakura's dream world and her worst night-mare.

She didn't know how else to describe it.

Yes, it was very lonely, in many respects; Sakura spent much of her time studying, and, all things considered, she didn't have very much of a social life. Med school was kind of bad, for that.

But at the same time, it was everything that Sakura had ever wanted—the classes, the books, the _freedom_.

It was her first chance to be on her own.

_Don't screw it up_.

—

Sakura sat at her kitchen table, her fingers tap-tap-tapping against the lacquered surface. The scent of redwood smoke hung in the air, thick, heady, spicy, having filtered through the open window from the sickly-smelling branches burning in the fire-pit next door.

She'd never liked The Waiting Game, much.

The sun wouldn't rise for another several hours, and the cranberry cooler sitting on the table next to Sakura was lukewarm.

She looked out the window, and stared at the black sky.

No stars. The city lights had washed them all away, hidden in the light-pollution that came with living in this big, big city.

Sakura kind of missed the stars.

She missed them the way she missed hand-written letters, burnt photographs, and sitting on the back-porch during Indian Summer, in early fall. She missed them in a little-girl way; missed them like she would miss a childhood security blanket.

A sigh escaped her lips.

Normally, she liked the light, because it made her feel so much less insignificant (stars always did that—Sakura remembered winter nights with people she used to love, bundled up like miniature snowmen, breath coming out in puffs of smoke over thick knitted scarves, mittened hands, and–).

Legs pulled up to her chest, the scent of burning wood scorching her nose, Sakura rested her head on her knees, and waited for the phone to ring.

—

She waited three days.

_Three days_.

And the phone didn't ring.

Sakura hid her face in a pillow, and sobbed herself dry.

—

_From: UchihaS   
To: ChChChCherryBomb   
Subject:__ No Subject_

_I forgot to call.  
Mother says she misses you, and to come visit._

_—Sasuke_

(Sakura screamed, and was tempted to break her laptop in half. She hadn't ever really hated another person before, not really.

But Sasuke was kind of a special case.)

—

Karin was the one to pull Sakura out of her slump. All it took was a sneer down the nose, and a cold "You look pathetic."

From anyone, that would have been harsh. But from her best friend (ex-boyfriend's younger sister)? It made the bile rise in Sakura's throat.

"What are you doing here? How did you even get _in_?

Karin tossed red hair, and surveyed Sakura critically through her glasses. "Please. This is _me_ we're talking about, Sakura."

As if that explained it all.

It was silent, save for the rhythmic tapping of Karin's stilettoed heel.

Sakura's shoulders slumped. "I have a exam in the morning, Karin."

"You say that like you expect me to _care_, or something."

When Sakura said nothing, and stared stonily, Karin let out a sigh, exasperation running deep in her veins. "You're in university! You're supposed to blow off lectures and exams and stuff, and make mistakes! It's, like, part of the whole _deal_!"

"I just—"

"Get up," Karin said, annoyed. "There is a mildly decent coffee shop three minutes from the Law Faculty's doors. We're going there. You're going to put on some acceptable-to-me clothes, and I'm going to purge this useless-_ness_ out of you. It's messing with my mojo."

A smile twitched Sakura's lips. "I can't believe you _actually_ just said that."

Karin grinned wide, brighter then city lights and stars and maybe even Sasuke (although that was one was questionable, because Sasuke didn't so much as glow as he did—Sakura didn't even know). Sakura sighed, resigned.

It was usually better to let Karin have what she wanted, anyway.

—

"I hate coffee."

"Then drink something else."

The coffee left an acrid aftertaste in Sakura's mouth. The two girls sat in the comfortable leather seats by the window, and drank the sickly caffeinated, overly-sweet drink in silence.

"He misses you, you know."

Sakura snorted, the sarcasm laying itself so thickly on the sound, that she didn't even know if it was sarcasm, or hurt, or both. Either way, it wasn't fair. "His two-line email said as much."

Karin rolled her eyes. "You know he sucks at social contact in general. It's out of the teaspoon that is his emotional range."

"But—"

Karin cut her off. "But nothing. Sak, he _does_ miss you."

Sakura's face fell. "It's almost been a year. Since I left, I mean. I'll be twenty-one, soon."

"And my stupid brother's been moping for just about that long." Karin sighed. "You didn't even come home for Christmas, Sak, and you _know_ that that's the only time all our families get together, and actually manage to re-connect."

The hiss and whistle of the coffee machines gave Sakura a moment to stop, and think about what Karin had said. She chewed her lip. "I couldn't leave, there was too much going at the hospital."

"You're only third year!"

"But I have to. The clinic needed me, and I just—I worked _too hard_, Karin, to just… _not_," Sakura said, quietly.

Karin stirred the very tip of her finger in her going-cold coffee. "I know. But you think I didn't? I might be crazy and slutty sometimes, but I worked for that scholarship. Everyone missed you. Especially Sasuke."

Sakura looked miserable.

Karin sighed.

"Just think about it, okay? Call him, or something, I don't know."

"…Yeah, maybe."

It wasn't complete acceptance, but it was a start.

—

_From: UchihaS   
To: ChChChCherryBomb   
Subject:__ No Subject_

_I miss you all wrong._

–_Sasuke_

But Sakura deleted the email before it was even open. She didn't need that kind of guilt. He wasn't like he missed her, or anything, right?

—

(If Sakura was anyone else, she would have written letters. They would go like this:

_Hey Sasuke—_  
Crumple, crumple. Sigh. "That's not right."

_Dear Sasuke—_  
Crumple, crumple. Sigh. "That's not right, either."

_Sasuke_—  
Smooth, smooth. Breath. "That's better."  
_So Karin said_—

"Damn it." Crumple, crumple.

_Sasuke—_  
_I hope you're okay. Med school is crazy, so I don't really have the time to write or—well, anything, really. It's almost 2am, right now, and I just got off the late shift at the hospital. I was working the clinic, again. It's tiring, but… I like it._

_Iwa's really big. Like, really, __**really**__ big. I feel so insignificant, it's disgusting. You would like it here, though, I think. Something about it… I don't know, the city __**breathes**__. That's the best word for it. It's like the whole city's alive, all the time, no matter what's going on. _

_Night is my favourite time. Everything stills. The air __**sings**__—it's the air conditioners, I think. They work on the roads, at night, and there's always a jackhammer somewhere in the distance, and sometimes, I can hear sirens._

_Sometimes, there's even an engine gunning._

_It makes me miss you more then I already do._

_I hate that I can admit that somewhere that you're not going to see me anytime soon. It's not fair._

_Say hello to everyone for me. Love,  
—Sakura_

She would meticulously fold it, place it in an envelop, seal it, and hide it in her desk. It would never see the light of day or night, again.

Sakura didn't know that she was masochist.

But apparently, it was catching.)

—

"We're going on a road trip."

"Are you _crazy_, Karin?"

"That's been said. Pack your stuff, we're leaving ASAP."

Sakura stared at her, aghast. "I _just_ finished my last exam, Karin. I want to go home, and go to _bed_."

Karin tossed her hair. "You can sleep in the car. And you _are_ going home. I'm _taking_ you there."

"Do I not get a choice?"

"Do you _ever_ get a choice?" Karin asked, rhetoric and bored.

Sakura hated her, and went to pack her clothes.

—

They stared at each other for the first time in a year.

Neither had anything to say.

Sakura kept clasped hands behind her back, her stomach twisting itself into tight knots that felt kind of like desperation and flying.

"Hi," she said.

"Hn."

"How are you?"

She was always the one asking the questions. It kind of made her sad, in a little-girl-who-can't-see-the-stars kind of way.

He said nothing for a minute. Dark hair fell across dark eyes, and Sakura felt her heart skip a beat. It had been a year—he shouldn't have been able to affect her like this. Not anymore.

He just looked at her, a strange expression marring his face.

"…God, I missed you."

Sakura felt herself smile. "Yeah. Me too."

—

(Back in Iwa, the phone blinked red—new message, new message.

A soft, baritone voice crackled through the speaker.

"_Email me dirty pictures of you with my name in marker everywhere, because I get crazy thinking about your eyes when you cry. I miss you all wrong, Sakura_."

But she didn't really need to hear it, anyway.)

—

.

.

.

.

.

_fin_.

**notes3**: I DON'T KNOW, OKAY.  
**notes4**: ladies and gents of the chorus, i have a dilemma: how does one deal with falling in love with one's best friend? HELP? leave a review, and let me know how you'd deal. maybe it'll give me an idea how to deal with mine. :)


	23. just tonight

**disclaimer**: nope.  
**dedication**: uhm so to episode 166. because, HOLY SHIT. SO ADORABLE.  
**notes**: WHY HELLO, SUMMER, HOW NICE OF YOU TO JOIN US.  
**notes2**: or not. what a bitch.  
**notes3**: this is the direct prequel to "white sparrows". mhmm. yup. i totally know what i'm talking about.

**title**: just tonight  
**summary**: It's two minutes after eleven-eleven, and they're sitting on her driveway, listening to Jimmy Eat World, pretending this isn't the end. Well, here's to living in the moment. — Sasuke/Sakura; 23/5o.

—

.

.

.

.

.

**8pm**  
—_if you're listening, sing it back_

.

It was something shoved beneath the bed, put away, hidden under lock and key. It was something left to the night, left to the cobwebs of the back of an empty room, left to the very last minute.

Sakura lay back against cold concrete, and fought not to think of the approaching morning.

Leaving. She would be leaving.

"It's only for a couple of years, Sasuke-kun. It's not like I'm not coming back," she told the empty air.

There was no reply.

It wasn't like he was there, anyway.

Sakura stared up at the still-light sky, bubblegum-coloured ponytail making an uncomfortable pillow beneath her head. She had twelve hours, give or take. Twelve hours, and then she would be leaving the childhood world of good fortune, pink jelly beans, the tinkle of a music box, flying through the air on a swing set, hair flashing like strands of stardust-pink silk in the sunlight – all that would be left behind.

Tight, worried, terrified pain coiled in chest; a living-breathing monster made of fear and insecurity that sat in her stomach and _god, how am I going to do this – it's terrifying and I'm not good at this and I'm going to screw up, I __**know**__ it_–

Sakura lay on the concrete, and wondered if this was what dying was like.

—

**9pm**  
—_i loved you, and i should have said it, but tell me just what has it ever meant?_

.

Sakura drank a cup of overly sweet tea. The honeyed drink slid down her throat, a soothing balm for tears and sadness and all the sad things that Sakura didn't want to deal with.

She smiled down at her reflection, and watched steam rise into the darkening sky.

—

**10pm**  
_—the enemy is you, as well, the enemy is i. give it up_

.

"Sorry. I'm late."

"You're always late, Sasuke-kun."

"Hn."

Sakura didn't even know where to begin. Sasuke was good at that – making her forget where the Wrong Things ended, and when the Right Things started (if they ever even started, because sometimes, Sakura wondered if there was even a start and end to such things; didn't they always go around and around in circles forever, or something?).

It was a Right Thing that Sakura was going away.

It _was_.

(There was nothing she could do about it, anyway – why even fight the inevitable?)

"Aren't you going to sit down?"

"Hn."

And he did, unfolding long legs out on the bleached-by-the-sun-pale concrete. Sakura looked over at him, cheek pressed against the ground. She was too tired, really, to say anything, do anything more then just look at it.

And it wasn't even all that late.

She choked back a hysteric laugh that threatened to break free, and turned her face towards the sky.

Ten hours. She still had ten hours to tell him that she loved him.

Somehow, Sakura didn't feel like it was even close to enough.

—

**11pm**  
—_let the water come; she's the only one i love_

.

And so she started to talk, if only to fill the empty air.

"Did you make a wish?"

"Hn?"

"It was eleven-eleven two minutes ago, Sasuke-kun. Did you make a wish?"

There was silence. Sakura knew without a doubt that Sasuke had stopped wishing a long time ago; it was foolish to ask him something that had so obvious an answer. But Sakura would do anything, _anything_, to have him open up.

Even if it was only just for a little while.

"…I did," he said, after a moment or two.

"What was it about?" Sakura asked. She propped herself up on her elbow (scrape, scrape, skin against asphalt; that would hurt in the morning), and stared at him, face rested comfortably on her hand.

She watched the way his lips quirked up, and Sakura found herself almost gifted with a one of Uchiha Sasuke's rare, precious, something-to-die-for smiles. But then, Sasuke didn't really _ever_ smile.

He'd stopped doing something as simple as smiling a long time ago.

"If I told you, Sakura–" and his voice was heated sand sliding across iced black silk. Sakura hated him, a little. "–Then it wouldn't come true, would it?"

Sakura glared at him. He wasn't supposed to know things like that! He wasn't supposed to be a – a – Sakura didn't even have a word for it. On anyone else, the word she was looking for would have been "dreamer". But Sasuke didn't dream. Sasuke was focused and ambitious and quiet.

_No_, Sakura thought, _Sasuke had never had time for dreams_.

"Don't be like that, Sasuke-kun. I'll tell you mine?"

Sasuke just raised an eyebrow at her. In the glow of the bulbous yellow-white Christmas lights that were still wrapped the trees that guarded the length of Sakura's driveway, he looked out of place – a dark, aristocratic boy with a dark, aristocratic smirk, and dark, aristocratic beauty, amidst a world of plastic and finger paintings and sidewalk chalk. The image was so incongruous that Sakura wanted to do something –_anything_, really– to make him a little more reachable.

"Touching, Sakura."

"You know you love me," she told him frankly. Sasuke made a noise that was something between a snort and dissent.

Sakura wasn't really surprised.

"…"

"You want to know, don't you?" and laughter bubbled in her throat. Sasuke had always been almost pathetically predictable.

"Hn."

"I wished for tomorrow to never come," she told him, voice hushed.

"Tomorrow always comes, Sakura," Sasuke said, slow, slow, and Sakura wondered if this was as hard for him as it was for her. The way he clenched his jaw told her that it was, and a rush of fierce affection ran through her.

Silly Sasuke-kun.

"I know. I just–"

"I know, Sakura. I know."

Sakura smiled weakly, and ignored the way her stomach convulsed and started trying to eat itself.

—

**12am**  
—_when the dance is through, it's me and you. come on, would it really be so bad?_

.

Sakura knew that Sasuke had never liked laying on concrete. It wasn't something that befitted someone like him.

It was stupid, and it was silly, and she was _really_ going to regret this in morning, but Sakura couldn't help the small grin that made its way across her face. Sasuke was lying next to her, his arm tucked under her neck like some human pillow, and there, quiet, they lay and watched the stars.

Happiness nestled in her stomach.

But it was calm, sad happiness, the melancholy strains of a harp's plucked strings at someone's funeral. Not quite contented, but not quite miserable, either.

It was quiet acceptance.

Sakura shifted closer to Sasuke.

Eight hours.

—

**1am**  
—_loves goes anywhere; in your darkest times, it's just enough to know it's there_

.

"We're all going away. It's kind of – sad."

"Hn?"

"Stupidity doesn't match your shoes, Sasuke-kun. You know exactly what I'm talking about."

"Hn."

"Ino's going away to fashion school in Ame and dragging Kiba with her, Karin got in to Iwa for law –god knows how, I think she must have bribed someone–, Naruto's off travelling the world, and Sai's headed to art school in Kiri, I think. Hinata's managed to get into the most prestigious music academy in Kumo, and Shikamaru's going to Suna for _engineering_ and, well, _Temari_… They've all grown up."

"You didn't mention us," Sasuke said, and Sakura caught his sharp glance.

She sighed. "I'm kind of trying to ignore us, Sasuke-kun."

_If there was even an "us" to begin with, right?_ Sakura thought. Tired. Just tired – not bitter, not angry, not even sad, not really. Just tired.

"You're leaving in the morning, Sakura," Sasuke said pointedly, and Sakura kind of winced and shrugged.

"I'm trying to ignore that, too."

"I know you are."

The world quieted for a moment, and neither of them said anything. The _shh-shh-shh_ of wind across the pavement sang of the end of summer, autumn's bitter chill just around the corner.

Sakura shivered, and thought of university and skinny jeans and piles and piles of crunchy leaves beneath heeled boots, and wondered if Sasuke knew what it was like to dream.

—

**2am**  
—_you close your eyes and kiss your hand, then you blow it_

.

The air was cold.

Sakura expected that, in a way; it was the darkest dregs of the night. There weren't even stars – the moon (ice-blue and blurred hazy, half-full, covered in strange wisps of cloud), seemed to drown them out of the sky.

They'd been laying on the ground, together, for almost three hours.

Six hours left.

"I love you." The words forced themselves out before Sakura could control her vocal cords.

Sasuke turned his face, and looked her straight in the eye. "And you're telling me this now?"

A weak smile worked its way across Sakura's face. "Yeah. When else was I supposed to tell you, Sasuke-kun? I didn't want to ruin the summer – it was the last one we had."

"…_Hn_."

"Don't be mad."

"I'm not," and this was Sasuke, and Sasuke didn't lie.

Sakura tilted her head back, and tried to get comfortable. The concrete was unforgiving, and Sakura shifted, grimacing. "I don't like asphalt," she murmured, grumpy.

"Quiet, Sakura," Sasuke sighed, and tugged her up. Sakura had half a mind to freeze, and freak out at him, as she felt her body leaving the still-cold concrete.

But Sasuke was more comfortable.

And he was _warm_.

"Go to sleep, Sakura," came Sasuke's voice, so close to her ear, so close, and warm and familiar and _Sasuke_…

Sakura thought of slow lines of music and black nail polish against pale skin and colour ribbons tangled around her fingers and scarves blowing in the wind, and closed her eyes.

—

**6am**  
—_you gave us someplace to go. i never said "thank you", for that_

.

The sun was coming up.

Two hours.

Sakura's eyelids flickered opened. She didn't move, for a moment, didn't breathe, didn't anything. She just lay on Sasuke's chest, and listened to his heart beat.

It was the first and last time.

—

**8am**  
–_there's a ringing in my head, and no one to help me answer it, even with you close enough to kiss_

.

She didn't even give him the chance to say goodbye.

—

.

.

.

.

.

_fin_.

**notes4**: DISLIKE. BOYS = DUMB.**  
notes5**: the reason i keep writing pieces like this is because i'm terrified of next year, hi.


	24. day 112

**disclaimer**: hurrr. nope. give it up.  
**dedication**: to Les and Sonya for being my soul family.  
**notes**: hello university. :D  
**notes2**: alternate reality, where Sasuke isn't such a douche. or something like that.

**title**: day 112  
**summary**: War. It was a monstrous thing. — Sasuke/Sakura; 24/5o.

—

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—**day 38 **

They were fighting a war.

It was pointless and brainless and awful—blood soaking into the ground, turning the mud to sickly-scented muck that clogged around Sakura's shoes, churning her stomach ten different shades of sick.

Sakura felt ill, and walked on.

—

—**day 46**

"It's okay, sweetie, drink this," Sakura whispered softly, and held a handful of water to the little girl's lips.

"Nngghnn…"

She couldn't have been more then five.

Sakura grimaced, and glanced up at her companion. Sasuke stood, a black smudge against a red sky, reaching into the nevermore. He looked calm and cool and collected, and Sakura didn't even know him, anymore.

"Mama…" the little girl in Sakura's arms murmured, her eyes closed. She couldn't have been more then _five_.

Sakura struggled not to cry. "It's okay, baby. I'm right here. Go to sleep, now. You'll feel better in the morning."

"'Kay…"

Sakura sent a sharp jolt of destructive magic through the little girl's tiny body. Felt her heart stop.

She stood up, sick.

"I hate this. I should be healing her—but I don't have the tools, or the time, or—or _any_ of it. But she was barely _five_, Sasuke. She hadn't even had the chance to _live_ really, yet."

"I know, Sakura. Let's go."

A single tear streaked down Sakura's grimy cheek. It left a shining, clear trail down the skin, and Sasuke looked at her only for a minute before brushing it away.

"Let's go," he said again.

Sasuke was not heartless, Sakura thought, as she pulled the hood of her ragged brown cloak up around her face. He was not heartless.

And that was probably the worst thing he could be, in the middle of a war.

—

—**day 63**

The village they were taking shelter in had been ravaged only a little less then the others.

There were still living people there, at the very least.

The scent of smoke still hung in the air. The shanties were lashed together with horse-mane rope, and those things never lasted long. Kerosene marks along the window-gutters spoke of childish finger-burns.

Sakura shrugged deeper into her travelling cloak.

The village wasn't empty.

It lacked the innately empty feeling of the ghost towns that she and Sasuke had gone through. The town, despite it's apparent (and certainly understandable, given the circumstances) lack of inhabitants, still had a soul.

The dusky, golden flecks of twilight were only beginning to appear, and Sakura and Sasuke stood on the roof of a dilapidated shack together.

"How long do you think this place has?" Sakura asked, softly, and watched the sun sink below the horizon.

Sasuke was painted in bloody shades of evening light, and he barely glanced at her. "Not long."

"We have to move on, tomorrow, don't we?"

"If you want to live, yes."

Sakura looked sad. "That's what I thought."

Death was black, built on violent slashes of red, and it was more then Sakura could do to sit down on the grey-ish roof shingles. It was more then she could do, to struggle not to cry.

The world hadn't ended, yet.

But it was coming.

—

—**day 71**

"We found Naruto, at least."

"He's half-dead, Sakura."

"But we found him! Doesn't that count for _something_?"

"Hn."

"…You know what, just—I don't even have time for this. I'm going to check if his fever's come down."

"Hn."

Sakura slammed the door on her way out.

Sasuke pinched the bridge of his nose, and wondered at the depths to which girls could sink. He said nothing, and watched the door with feral eyes. She would be back. There was only blood and death and broken hearts, waiting for her outside. She _would_ be back.

The echo of the slamming door lingered, and Sasuke sagged against the rickety wooden chair he was sitting on.

Sakura had no idea what she did to him.

—

—**day 85**

They were trapped.

Trapped, quite literally in between a rock and a hard place, Sakura stood, pressed close against Sasuke's chest. Sweat trickled down her spine, and pooled in the hollow of her lower back. Air breathed a thousand times hung around them, and the rough edges of the rock behind her bit into her skin.

But still, she did not move.

It was so hot.

There were others, too, hidden in the little crag that Sasuke had shoved her into. Naruto and the very quiet, very shy girl that Sakura's sunnily-dispositioned half-brother had found, and brought along; and a girl with red hair and glasses, that Sakura had seen once before, between two other boys.

All were silent, and listened to the screaming just beyond the fragile-protective layer of rock.

Too many dead.

—

Five hours slid by.

The sun began to rise, and most of the voices had died away long ago.

"Is it safe?"

"No."

"Is it safe to _leave_?" Sakura stressed. No, it was never safe—so that was stupid question, but—

"…Possibly. Don't move."

Sakura sighed, and dropped her forehead down to Sasuke's neck.

Too many dead.

—

—**day 90**

"We'll be lucky if she makes it through the night."

Sakura's breath rattled through her teeth, settling in her lungs like some sick account of a winter's tale. She shivered, and tried to remember what it was like to be warm; of summer and Sasuke's chest, heat, heat, _heat_, something, _anything_.

Someone pressed a cool hand to her forehead, and Sakura shied away from the contact.

Sleep, sleep seemed so tempting—she could sleep forever and forever, and stay away from the cold, and it would be so nice, _so nice_—

Hot lips pressed against hers (was that desperation?), and Sakura shivered, seeking the heat that suffused the unknown body.

"Don't _die_ on me, Sakura, _damn_ it, I'll _never_ forgive you if you die—"

—

—**day 112**

Sakura knelt next to someone's grave, and wished the buried boy a safe trip down the River Styx, even as she clung to Sasuke's hand.

"Thank you for saving me."

(This was how the story ended:

_There were no victors, in a war._

_There were only survivors._

Sakura learned that far, far too late.)

—

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_fin_.

**notes3**: wow, i legitimately don't even know. i confused myself again. review, please, and tell me if it confused you as much as it did me! :D


	25. fragile things

**disclaimer**: HURHURHUR.  
**dedication**: to Lynnie and Jeremiah and Les and Sonya and Cheyenne and Becca and ELENI (WHY ARE YOU LEAVING ME).  
**notes**: omigod why do i have so many friends. WHAT HAPPENED TO THE ANTI-SOCIAL SARA THAT USED TO EXIST?  
**notes2**: since when do i write from Lee's POV, wtf is _this_?

**title**: fragile things  
**summary**: Unrequited love isn't supposed to hurt this much. Lee, Sakura, Sasuke, and the bonds that lie between. Or don't. — Lee, Sasuke/Sakura. 25/5o.

—

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It is summer when Rock Lee first meets the girl that is going to be the love of his life.

It is hot and muggy, the air thick with unshed rain and the buzz of mosquitoes, but the sky is blue as a robin's egg, and the sun is bright. It is his day working. Summer camp counselling.

Lee is ecstatic.

The kids are great; the other guy he's working with is great (what's-his-face, Naruto?); everything is _great_. And Lee is outside, watching his kids, and they're eating lunch. And it's good, it's fun, and Lee is proclaiming and there's laughter and it's just—_fun_.

And then she walks by, and the whole world _stops_.

Lee is gobsmacked, frozen in time, watching her smile. Eyes as green as the Granny Smith apple slice that is half-way to his mouth glitter, and she's leading a group of ten year olds forward, half-shouting in laughter over her shoulder.

She's perfection incarnate, and Lee doesn't even know her name.

He holds his breath, and she throws herself down next to him, and easily instructs her group to do the same. The children mingle, and Lee _can't breathe_.

She glances at him, and grins. Her voice is low, when she speaks; a barely-there brush of air. "Hi! I'm _Insert-Generic-Camp-Name-Here_, but, you know, since we're going to be friends, you should probably call me Sakura."

Lee doesn't know what to say.

And that is not something that happens all that often.

So he sends her a sparkly smile back in return, and announces "I am Lee!"

(He hopes his campers don't hear, but, really, he can't bring himself to care. This girl—Sakura? It suits her—is laughing, and Lee is falling fast and hard, and, _god_, she's the love of his life, and he just _knows_ it.)

"Well, Lee," she laughs, "it's nice to meet you!"

The sound is like diamond shards falling through rainbows, and Lee is struck dumb again.

—

The summer flies by in a blur of heat and rain and gymp braids, and Lee counts the seconds by how many times he sees Sakura. Sometimes he counts it by how many times she's not at work. But most of the time, he counts the seconds by how many times he can make her grin, because Sakura's grins are worth something.

Everyone likes her. _Everyone_.

_It's hard to __**not**__ like Sakura_, Lee thinks, and watches a six-year-old messily smear face-paint across Sakura's cheek. She's flinching and laughing, and smearing the paint right back.

Typical Sakura.

Everyone likes her. Everyone wants to work with her, because she makes long days short, and her laughter is often proceeded by trouble. And she works _so hard_; she's worked with almost everyone.

But she spends the most time working with Lee (she put in a request that they work together, and their boss shrugged and complied), and Lee swells with pride, because he can see the almost-jealous looks that the other guys throw him when Sakura's not looking.

And Lee is falling more and more in love with her, every day.

—

They are sitting in a coffee shop after work—they both look scraggly and exhausted, but then, that is part of what they signed up for, and the weekends do really make up for the weeks. Lee is drinking a glass of ice water (because caffeine and Lee do not mix well, much to Sakura's endless amusement), and Sakura's hands are wrapped around a steaming cup of tea.

It rained, today.

The road is still wet, and the air still smells like just-washed laundry. Lee likes days like today, and Sakura has so much to do with it, it's more then pathetic.

But she's sitting there, looking out the window with a far-off look on her face, and Lee grins wide like the whole blue sky, clean and clear, for once. "What's on your mind, Flower?"

Flower. That's her camp name. He calls her that, because to say her name would be sacrilege, he thinks.

She starts, and looks up at him. "Oh. Nothing."

Lee just stares, bangs just brushing his eyebrows. It's odd to have them so long, but Sakura says that she likes them better that way—it makes him look "less formal, or something", and Lee has never been one to deny Sakura anything.

But they have been friends long enough, now, for Lee to know when Sakura was lying and when she wasn't. And right now, she is lying, and Lee really doesn't like it when Sakura lies.

"Flower, don't be like that," Lee says.

She heaves a sigh that moves her whole body, and Lee is suddenly worried.

"It's—there's this guy," she says, finally.

And Lee doesn't know what to say, again.

They sit in the silence for a half minute, and then Lee asks "Who is it?"

Sakura just half-smiles. "No one you know, Lee. Don't worry about it—I'm just being crazy. It's probably nothing, anyway."

They don't speak on the subject again.

—

It is August when that "_nothing_" turns into "_something_".

Sakura comes in, glowing, and rushes to the girl called Kiwi (she is blonde, and, apparently, she and Sakura have been friends for years), and she screeches "OMIGOD, INO, YOU WILL _NEVER_ BELIEVE WHAT JUST HAPPENED—"

Lee turns away, and heads towards the pool area.

He doesn't want to know what made her look like that.

Mostly because it wasn't him, but he doesn't tell anyone that.

—

And then that "_something_" turns into "_someone_".

Lee meets Uchiha Sasuke for the first time. Sakura's standing at the entrance of the building, looking up into the face of the most—and Lee hates to admit it, because his looks are suddenly beyond inadequate—handsome boy Lee has ever seen, and smiling a very different smile then he's seen before.

Sakura is talking fast, trying to get the words out, and the boy just looks amused.

Lee is not so amused.

He loves Sakura.

But Lee has never been all that lucky, and so when he watches the girl he loves throw her arms around someone else's neck, he does absolutely nothing but walk over, and blink at the both of them.

Sakura pulls away, flushing to the roots of her cotton-candy hair (Lee has dreams about that hair, swirls and swirls of pale pink in the sunlight), and starts a clumsy introduction that dies in her throat.

"Uh—Lee, this is—uh, Sasuke. Sasuke is my—"

"I'm her boyfriend," and the voice is smooth and perfect as cream, and Lee hates him instantly on principle.

The two boys size each other up. Lee doesn't know what Sasuke is seeing, but he hopes it is something threatening (although that seems a little bit unlikely. Lee has tried his damndest to _not_ be threatening, for the kids' sake), because what Lee sees is something he never wanted to see.

Not around Sakura, anyway.

Sasuke is dark, Lee decides. There's something about his eyes—something shadowy and wild, and while he and Sakura-in-her-bright-red-camp-shirt do make a striking pair, Lee suppresses a shiver and the urge to grab Sakura and run.

"It's good to meet you, Sasuke," Lee declares.

Sasuke just raises an eyebrow, and tilts his head at Sakura. She stares at him for a long minute, deciphering an equally long look. She laughs. Then, as one, they turn, and start to leave.

Their hands are twined together. Lee feels ill.

And then Sakura is yelling "BYE, LEE! SEE YOU TOMORROW!" over her shoulder, and waving frantically.

Lee feels no better, and raises his hand in a half-hearted wave in reply.

He ignores the distant splintering that is his heart, and goes home.

—

He decides, that night, that if Sasuke is what makes Sakura happy (and he does make her happy—Lee has never seen Sakura smile so, before), then Lee will support it.

Because Lee loves Sakura, and as long as Sakura is happy, then so is Lee.

(_But that doesn't stop him from clenching his fists every time he sees them together_.)

—

"Do you love him?" Lee asks, one day after work, but before Sasuke has come to take Sakura home.

"Yes," she says simply. "I always have."

Lee is reminded of diamonds falling through rainbows, but this time, it's the shards of his heart, and he knows that he can't keep this up.

"Well, my darling Flower, if you're sure—"

"I am—_Sasuke_!" and Sakura is gone in a flash of pink-red-green, and tackles the dark boy to the ground.

Lee can't watch.

He's just second best.

And that hurts.

—

Lee quits the next morning.

Sakura catches up to him, concern shining in those eyes, and Lee almost feels his resolve slip. If only, if _only_—

"_Why_?" she asks.

Lee is about to explain everything; that he does _love_ her, that Sasuke is just—_bad_, _wrong_ for her, that—

But he raises his eyes, and stares Uchiha Sasuke in the face. He watches Sakura's eyes flick in the dark boy's direction. And Lee knows, then, that he never stood a chance in the first place.

"Because," Lee says.

He pretends he doesn't see Sasuke wrap his arm around Sakura's small shoulders. He pretends that she doesn't move away. Lee pretends a lot of things, these days.

Lee shoulders his backpack, and leaves the building for the last time.

"Goodbye, Sakura," he murmurs.

_It's always the fragile things_, he thinks.

And then Lee is gone.

—

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_fin_.

**notes3**: you know, i never actually thought how it must feel, to be Lee… it would suck, man. it would just _suck_.  
**notes4**: this sort of may or may not have actually happened. sort of.


	26. the youth electric

**disclaimer**: nope.  
**dedication**: to mr. brightside. sorry. you're kind of stuck with me. lessthanthree?  
**notes**: i need to stop watching trashy reality TV. and. idek what the hell this is. srsly.

**title**: the youth electric  
**summary**: Growing up is hard to do. "He makes me messy, Karin." — Sasuke/Sakura; 26/5o.

—

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Down on hands and knees, a girl pressed her ear against the ground. She held her breath, and _listened_.

It was a miscalculation.

Silence reigned, and she spat, disgusted.

—

Smoke snaked through the air, wisps drifting like flotsam. The sun, hidden behind a filmy curtain, was blotted from the sky. The taste of wood-smoke was acrid in her throat, choke-hold, nauseating, angry, _dirty_.

Sakura raised her head, and wiped strands of sweat-dark pink hair out of her eyes. She took a breath of smoky air into her lungs, and wrinkled her nose.

"The air tastes like shit," Sakura grumbled, slammed the door of someone else's apartment—_bang—_dropped her pack on the floor—_thud—_and went to find something to eat.

The room was cold, and Sakura shivered.

The calendar hung on the wall, glaringly obvious.

Sakura breaths came out in puffs. It was impossible to ignore, and it drove her crazy. Another day, crossed off with red ink. The empty squares taunted, blank with their blankness, white with their whiteness, empty with their _emptiness_.

It was just that many days until she got back into classes. It was just that many days before everyone came back. It was just that many days.

Sakura grabbed the red marker sitting beside the phone, and struck out another day—

(_and today was a day just like any other_)

—because it was just that many more days.

—

Sakura really didn't like doing laundry.

It wasn't that she had a real issue with the laundry part itself; it was more that it was just such a waste of time, and Sakura hated wasting her time.

Her new roommate would be showing up, soon.

And, while Sakura hated wasting her time, she hated dirty laundry more.

So she sat in the basement of her dorm, and flicked through a magazine—_flick flick flick—_a little bit bored and a lot bit tired. She wasn't supposed to care about things like this. Too superficial, too far out of reach, too fake for brainy Haruno Sakura.

And she was _so_ not in the mood.

—_flick flick flick—_ went the pages, and Sakura waited quietly like a good girl for the laundry machines to finish humming.

It was going to be a long night.

—

"You? _You_ are my roommate?" and the shriek echoed through the still mostly empty campus.

"Who were you expecting, Sakura?"

"_Not you_!" she hissed at him, teeth bared. If she were an animal, she'd have been frothing at the mouth.

Sakura really didn't like the thought of that.

"Hn."

"_God_, you tick me off!"

They didn't speak for a week.

—

Sakura smelled like pomegranate conditioner and sex, and looked like shit, when she stepped into the campus coffee shop. Eyes black (from too many nights where she didn't sleep, he guessed), hair all over (had she slept on it?), and the faint green tinge of a hangover—that was Sakura at her best and worst.

She smiled wryly at him.

"I don't need to hear it—I know I look like hell."

Sasuke raised an eyebrow. "Where were you?"

"Drinking. With Ino and Karin."

He said nothing, because that was nothing new. He waited for her next words, because she was Sakura and Sakura not talking was like the world not spinning, was like tomorrow not coming, was like—was like the sun not rising.

It just didn't happen.

"I at least woke up in my own room, this time?"

"You are going to kill yourself," he grumbled, and shakes dark hair out of his eyes.

Sakura laughed, harsh and sharp like jagged shards of broken glass. "Nah—you're going to make sure I don't."

"Just like always, Sakura."

"Just like always, Sasuke."

—

This is how she remembers the end of (her) world:

There was a boy dressed in black, not too far off, and a jay bird, sing-screeching in the distance. There was blue sky, and endless tasselled hats raining down in warm June air.

That was graduation.

It was a long time ago.

But then, a lot of things were a long time ago, and Sakura just didn't have the patience to deal with them, anymore.

—

"You two have _the_ most fucked up relationship _ever_."

"What do you _want_ me to say?" Sakura hissed through her teeth. "At least he's not my step-brother, or something! And there is _no way_ it's as fucked up as yours and Suigetsu's."

Karin snickered. "Honey, you may be fucked up, but you're not _that_ fucked up. Or, actually, you might be—you just don't have someone to test that theory out on. And Suigetsu's a douche, anyway."

The cup of tea in her hands was cold, and Sakura stared at her reflection in the saccharine liquid. Chamomile, it was chamomile, and so sweet, _so sweet_, because Karin loved sweet tea. But Sakura was starting to think she hated it, if only to be contrary.

"He makes me messy, Karin."

The two girls looked down at their cups.

No one said anything, and Sakura didn't know what to do.

But that was nothing new, was it?

—

The atmosphere was thick with tension and the crackle of raw power that the air seemed to hold right before a thunderstorm.

Sakura's bones felt too big for her body, so she just stood outside on the balcony, wrapped up in a (stolen) housecoat (of Sasuke's). Chilly air nipped at her cheeks. When Sakura looked down, down, down to the pavement, the colours of autumn flared to life around her, although they were dampened by the dark husk of the clouds overhead.

Sakura shivered, and drew the housecoat tighter around her frame.

She was a Summer Child, made for late spring and long days and short nights and _heat_.

Sakura did not do well in the cold, and—

—eyes on the back of her neck had always made her shudder. Sakura turned around, and glanced at her roommate-person-boyfriend-_thing_.

He didn't even say anything. He just raised an eyebrow at the housecoat, and stared at her like she'd gone mad.

Sakura huffed. "It's cold out here."

"Hn."

And his arms snaked around her waist from behind; solid, warm, strangely impersonal—it was so _Sasuke_.

"I have class in half an hour," she said.

"_Sakura_. You're being annoying."

But she made no move to leave, and the day wore on.

"It's going to snow," Sakura said softly.

The sky was dark grey, right then, and Sasuke's head dropped down onto her shoulder, fingers twining like weeds. "I know."

So they stood, and stared at the sky, and waited.

—

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_fin_.

**notes2**: hrm. idk what this is. that seems to be happening a lot, lately. i'm feeling a bit too big for my skin, too. i'm coming to terms with a lot of things, i guess - so feedback would be muchly appreciated! :)


	27. stockholm syndrome

**disclaimer**: yeah, funny.  
**dedication**:to the mother monster: thank you for giving us a voice.  
**notes**: iLike university. so much. also SBNY. if you read it, please review, we love to hear from you all!  
**notes2**: i _SWEAR_ this is NOT MY FAULT. blame 2AM and les, altho' not necessarily in that order. and also jeremy, for making me crazy.**  
**

**title**: stockholm syndrome  
**summary**: She's got no hope. He's got no inhibitions. She's cracking. He's trying. Nothing's helping. Time is relative, and so is the past. They're getting good at running, though. — Sasuke/Sakura; 27/5o.

—

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—**2023, early october**

Their afternoons are spent in dingy hotel rooms, slats of golden sunlight turning the dust motes in the room into balls of fire that flame for a split-second, only to disappear. Dirty cotton sheets, thread-bare and the colour of spoiled milk, tangled around long, pale limbs, in the late afternoon light.

A girl stands, stretches, her arms reaching toward the low, stuccoed ceiling. "It's too fuckin' early for this shit," she grumbles, running a hand through vibrant pink hair. "You alive?"

A grunt from the other bed tells her that the other occupant of the room is, indeed, alive. Pity, really.

The girl stumbles towards the bathroom, rubbing her left eye with her fist. Her skin comes away dark and sparkly, with yesterday's mascara and glitter. She grimaces at it.

"I'm taking a shower. You getting up?" she calls over her shoulder, and another grunt comes, louder, this time, and the rustling of sheets.

She rolls her eyes and steps into the shower.

The gush of water is cold, freezing against still-warm flesh. The girl shivers under the icy spray for three minutes, soap stinging her eyes, and then gets out. She wraps a towel around herself, and wanders back out into the hotel room.

The useless asshole is still sitting in bed. The laths of sunlight, dark-gold-dark-gold, stretch across his bare chest. The girl forces herself to not punch him through the wall. It takes more strength of will then she cares to admit.

"Put some clothes on," she says. And then "–I think we're running out of alcohol. Fuck."

"Same to you, kid."

The girl eyeballs him dangerously, rivulets of water running down her shoulder blades in tandem with her breath. "My name," she tells him through gritted teeth, "is _Sakura_. I've told you that like a million times. Say it with me now, okay—_Sa-ku-ra_, it's _not_ that hard!"

Thoughtful, dark eyes stare at her from under level brows, and the girl-almost-woman (sometimes called Sakura) struggles to not pull her hair out in frustration. He was so—so _infuriating_. She stares at him in return, green eyes flashing annoyance, and holds her towel close to her body.

"Look," she says, slowly, "we're trapped here. We are _trapped_ here, _**together**_, until further notice. So you can be as bitchy as you want, but don't you _dare_ degrade me."

He snorts. The muscles in his throat tense as he makes the sound, and Sakura averts her eyes.

"Hn. It's not my fault that your boss forced this on you," he grumbles at her.

"It's not _my_ fault that you're a dirty traitor, either, is it?" she snaps back. The room goes very still, and Sakura regrets the words as they leave her mouth.

The boy's dark eyes go blank, and the air between them crackles with tension.

"Do what you want," he says. His voice sounds dead in the charged air.

Breath stuck in her throat, Sakura flees back into the bathroom.

Once the door closes behind her, she lets the air out in a rush. "Sorry, Sasuke. You didn't deserve that," she murmurs, but the words are lost among the soft hum of the air condition, and the quiet drip of the tap.

He wouldn't hear them, today.

—

—**2015, late april**

Sakura is eleven, when the new next door neighbours move in. They are a quiet family, Sakura thinks, and is dismayed at the state of constant chaos in her own home.

_They_ consist of a father, a mother, and two boys, one who is almost seventeen, and another who is Sakura's age, or maybe a little older.

The boy who is Sakura age looks like a lonely child. Sakura sneaks peeks towards him when they walk to school, but doesn't manage to dredge up the courage to talk to him; that would be too much like stepping out of line, and Sakura's not-so-safe world, stepping out of line is dangerous.

And then one day, Sakura's brother-but-not-by-blood gets into a fight with the lonely boy. Sakura stops the fight because she doesn't want either of them to end up bleeding on the floor, and for a very long minute, the two boys stare at each other, furious.

The minute goes on for a very, very long time, and Sakura bites her bottom lip, and hopes that they won't start fighting again, because that would be–

Naruto (_oh, Naruto_, Sakura thinks, fond) sticks his hand out, ever gangly in his just-starting-to-grow body, and grins at the other boy.

The other boy almost grins back, grabs Naruto's wrist, and they shake on it. The two boys sit down, and Naruto drags Sakura down with them, introducing her loudly as "MY SISTER, SAKURA, SO DON'T YOU DARE HURT HER, TEME."

The boy shrugs blankly, but gives Sakura look that speaks of acknowledgement. She grins wide as the whole sky, and asks him to share her lunch; she has too much, and he looks hungry, anyway.

Naruto is appalled, and yells some more.

But that is how Haruno Sakura meets Uchiha Sasuke. And that is the beginning of the end.

—

—**2023, october**

They spend their evenings in late-night cafés, anonymous faces, blurred among the eight million other patrons. People are always coming and going, flashes of light and life, and the café bustles with activity.

Sakura sits on a high chair, a mug of chai tea between her chilled fingertips. She doesn't look at Sasuke—this is the first time they've been outside of the hotel room in a week.

He is drinking black coffee. Thick, black, no sugar, no milk, no cream, and Sakura thinks that he must like bitter things; they suit him so well, it's almost startling. He still hasn't spoken to her directly, but she doesn't mind so much.

At least he _is_ speaking to her.

If it had been yesterday, he wouldn't have been.

But it wasn't yesterday, and Sakura sits in the coffee shop, drinking sweet chai tea, with someone that she used to love.

She fiddles with her scarf (thick, woollen, it cuts the cold from the coming winter, the chill of autumn already in the air), and sips her tea self-conciously.

Sasuke's a wanted man—a traitor to both sides.

Of course they'd all want him dead.

But Sakura is not afraid to sit there with him, watching the last traces of purple dusk disappear into the abyss of night, because she knows—she just _knows_—that they are safe. In the dregs of the city center, they are less conspicuous then they would have been, had they been out in the midst of nowhere.

After all, the best place to hide something is right in plain sight.

Sakura nods to herself, and sips the chai, again. The taste is fragrant, and balances delicately on her tongue. She knows that Sasuke's black eyes watch her, watch the way she dips the tip of her index finger into the tea, watch the way she mixes it in a counter-clockwise circle, watch the way her eyes are everywhere, all the time.

He watches her, because she watches the rest of the world; and if he does not watch her, who will?

—

—**2015, may**

The planes fly high in the atmosphere, vicious slashes of white exhaust against blue sky, and NarutoSakuraSasuke lie on the top of a very green, very high hill, together, the three of them.

They're still children, even if they deny it, and Sakura dances her fingers across the open expanse of blue, drawing never-seen patterns in the sky.

"I wonder where the planes go."

"Huh, you know, Sakura-chan, I never thought of that! I bet they go—"

"Shut up, dobe."

"SASUKE-TEME, YOU ARE LAME. SO LAME. SUPER LAME. YOU CLEARLY HAVE NOTHING ON MOI, THE GREAT NARUTO-SAMA!"

Sakura still laughs at the memory, but years later, she will wish that she never asked that.

—

—**2023, late october**

They spend their nights in silence, pale, fake dawn brushing against the eaves outside the window. The water damage on the stuccoed ceiling is getting worse, and, for the life of her, Sakura can't remember why they're still trapped here.

"Do you think it's ever going to end?" she asks, one morning.

Neither has slept, and Sasuke looks a mess, dark rings around his eyes, lack of sleep and overt caution, the cause. Sakura is sure she doesn't look much better—she feels like the living dead.

"No."

Sakura laughs, but it's not a happy laugh. "We're going to hell in a hand-basket. The whole _world_ is going to hell in a hand-basket. What's the fucking _point_?"

Her lips crack and bleed, and she lies on her bed, and pretends that this is all a dream, all a dream, a horrible, horrible dream, and that she's going to wake up one day.

She's just not sure when that "one day" is going to come, if ever, and so she pushes herself up, leaning on one elbow and looks at Sasuke. He's in the bed, a twin to her own, only a foot away, and so close, close enough to touch, but she won't.

She just looks at him, and feels lost, because she can't remember why she was angry with him, in the first place.

Sakura thinks she's a little bit cracked in the head, and the steady drip-drip-drip from the tap and the water damage on the roof isn't helping.

So she laughs and laughs, bleeding lips and all. He kisses her for the first time, like that, lips red and wet and just starting to go crazy. It's bloody and uncomfortable, a clash of teeth and _where do the noses go_ and–

She lets him kiss her, because he's beautiful and he's sad and there's no one else to kiss.

He's beautiful in a broken way, a traitor's smirk tucked into the corners of his mouth, but when he kisses her, she can't really see that smirk, and so she ignores it.

Sakura lets him kiss her, because there's nothing really else to do.

—

—**2015, late june**

School is out, not that many people go, anyway.

Sakura listens as the laughter of her year trails through the halls, because "–_we're done, we're done, we're __**free**_!"

And she cannot begrudge them that.

Naruto and Sasuke stand together at the doors, waiting for her. She waves at them, and drags the shy, sweet girl that's kept her company for most of the year behind her.

Sakura's cheeks are flushed as she throws one arm in the air, and waves at the both of them, laughing. "Hey! Naruto! Sasuke! I have someone I want you to meet!"

They stop, together, and the shy girl is instantly red. Sakura grins, wide and happy, and says "This is Hinata! Hinata, that's my brother Naruto's, he's an idiot, ignore him, and that's Sasuke, but he's also an idiot, so maybe you should just ignore them both…"

Hinata looks confused, but Sakura just continues to grin like a manic-depressive. The shy, sweet girl squeaks when Sakura pushes her towards Naruto.

Sakura whips pink hair out of green eyes, grabs Sasuke's arm, and drags him away. Over her shoulder, she calls "Don't break her, Naruto! If you do, I'll have to kill you! She's my friend, alright?"

Then she drags Sasuke round a bend, and Sakura starts to laugh.

It's real laughter, the kind where she snorts every so often, and it bubbles up in her throat like expensive champagne, from somewhere deep in her chest. There's nothing elegant about it.

Sasuke, despite everything, finds that he likes it all the same.

It is Sakura made into sound, he thinks.

She's still laughing, and Sasuke can only cover his eyes, and hope to whatever god exists that he's never going to end up at the end of one of her harebrained schemes. She's giggling to herself, and mumbling about how it was about time. He thinks that she does make him laugh, though, so maybe its reason enough to keep her around.

He slings an arm around her shoulders. She shoots him a brilliant smile, and they head home.

—

—**2023, early november**

The mornings are a jumble of under-the-breath swear words and shards of broken coffee mugs on the once upon a time white linoleum floor. The scent of something burning stains the air. The sky outside is still dark, and there is little movement. Everything is dead, in the world, at this time. The city holds its breath, and waits.

For what, no one can be sure, but it _does_ wait. Winter is cold, and Sakura shivers in her bed.

She would miss the sun, if she had the chance.

Instead, her stomach growls, and she forces herself out of bed, sleepy-eyed and tangle-haired. It makes her think of the afternoons, the sheets around her legs, and thick slats of dusty sunlight.

They pushed the beds together a week ago, because being close was better then being apart, if only by a little, and Sakura rolls over and looks at Sasuke.

He is immobile, eyes closed. He looks, she thinks, different, like that. Maybe peaceful, but that might not even be the right word.

Sakura is painfully aware, right in this moment, that this—this _thing_, that they have—can't go on. It just _can't_.

So she doesn't wake him up.

It's not that she doesn't love it—it's just that it's delicate.

She looks at him, and wonders.

—

—**2015, july**

"Sakura," he says.

He's covered in blood. Sakura is horrified. "Sasuke—wait, wh-what? Are—are you okay?"

He shakes his head, eyes blank, empty. "I killed someone."

She forgets that they're eleven, and that she's just fooling herself. She cares about him more than she has any right to, but then, that's never stopped her before. "Okay. Okay. What are we gonna do?"

"_We_ are not doing anything," he says, tense, jaw clenched.

"What?" She needs an explanation, because that sounded like—

"_I_ am leaving. _You_ are staying here," he clarifies.

Sakura _seethes_. She whips around, and hisses over her shoulder "_Fine_! See if I care!"

And she flounces off.

It's the first and last fight that they have for a long, long time. He's gone the next morning—she really didn't think he was going to leave. Really. She ends up sitting against a brick wall. Tears slide down her cheeks. She sits there for a while. And she figures out that she never needed him in the first place.

It's just that it hurts.

—

—**2023, december**

The quiet times always happen around noon. The sun rises low, this time of year, and doesn't remain up for long. The light is cold, icy as the water from the shower-head, and if it snowed—it never snows—the snow would be the dirty colour of the sheets in the hotel.

So normally, they sleep through that part of the day.

But not today.

Sakura shakes Sasuke's arm, eyes wide and empty. "We have to go," she says, and her voice is urgent. Her voice is scared.

"What—Sakura, what's going—?"

"We have to _go_, Sasuke, get _up_, they're going to be here _any minute_, and—"

"_Who_, Sakura?"

She looks miserable, and a teardrop hides in the pit of one bright green eye. "The same people who _put_ us here."

He doesn't question when it became "us", and not "you". Maybe it was a long time ago, maybe it was yesterday; it doesn't matter _when_ it happened, just that it _has_.

Sasuke stands, and pulls Sakura up with him. She looks small and fragile. Something in his chest hurts, and he almost picks her up and cradles her close.

But he doesn't.

Instead, he puts a large hand on top of her cotton-candy-pink hair, and murmurs, "We better get going, then."

Sakura offers him a weak smile, and feels like they're getting better at slipping through the cracks. It takes talent, to keep that smile up, but she does it, because it is all either of them have.

And if she doesn't do it, who would?

—

—**2015, november**

She opens the letter with shaking fingers. There is no return address on the envelope.

It goes like this:

_Sakura,  
Don't worry. I'll be fine._

_Take care,  
—Sasuke_

He doesn't trust her at all, does he? She throws it in the fire after she's read it, and watches the edges curl up, black and burnt. The fire eats up the paper, eats up the ink, until there's nothing left but ash.

She doesn't regret it.

—

—**2024, january**

They settle in a tiny town in a different country. It's a magical little place, with Christmas lights still up, after the New Year's celebrations are complete.

The air tastes of seconds chances, and Sakura sweeps her hair back. She takes a deep breath, Sasuke at her side, and lets it all out in a rush.

She laughs and laughs, because maybe she does love him. Maybe.

She stretches towards the sky, fingers high in the air, and watches their lives start all over again.

—

.

.

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.

.

_fin_.

**notes4**: this thing is a goddamn _monster_. IT EVEN ATE UP MY SLEEP. NO JOKE.  
**notes5**: please review, it makes me happy. and there'll be cookies all around! :D


	28. six feet and slipping

**disclaimer**: you say that like you think i'm supposed to care, or something.  
**dedication**: i lack common sense. really. thank you sonya&les for accepting me at my worst. that takes tits. and also Big Bang Theory, but that's a totally different story.  
**notes**: watching summer die outside my window. i don't miss you i swear.

**title**: six feet and slipping  
**summary**: That summer, they lay on the hood of his truck, and promised to get away from that tiny town, together. If that meant burning buildings and crazy talk, well, that was just a bonus. — Sasuke/Sakura; 28/5o.

—

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.

.

Thick ropes of fluid poured out of the tank of gasoline in glistening cords. Sakura gritted her teeth, and sloshed through the flammable liquid. It was frigid around her ankles, soaking past her cheap black canvas sneakers and into her socks. She would leave them to burn; they were evidence that she didn't need. If anything, she would liked to have left her clothes to burn, as well.

But Sakura really liked this shirt.

Getting the industrial smell of the gasoline out of it, though, would be a pain.

Sakura grimaced, and left the room. There was a cigarette and a lighter in her bag –where was her bag, again? Oh, there it was–; that would do nicely.

She pulled the cancer stick from her pack, and flicked the lighter. Light flared. Sakura lit the cig up and took a single, long drag from it.

Exhaling grey, Sakura closed her eyes, kicked the sneakers off, and stepped out of her socks.

There.

She threw them back into the gasoline-soaked room that she'd just left; heard them splash and clunk. Sakura shook sweat-soaked pink hair out of her eyes, and took another long drag of the cigarette, feeling her lungs fill with smoke.

She held it there a moment, revelling in the acrid burn. It tasted disgusting. A cough threatened at the back of her throat, and Sakura indulged it.

"Death stick, away," she murmured, and flicked the still-burning cigarette from her fingertips into the ugly-smelling room.

She didn't wait for the spark and hiss of flame.

She was half a mile away when she heard the first sirens.

Sakura smiled. A night's work, well done.

—

August was just one huge heat-wave, and Sakura hated everything about it. Sweat trickled down her neck, brown grass crunching beneath her feet. It ought to have been illegal, for it to be this hot.

The trees were still bright, leafy green. Sakura didn't understand that—how could they be so green when there had been so little water?

Everything when up in smoke, when it was this hot. There'd already been three forest fires, and the trees were still smouldering.

But Sakura had had nothing to do with those ones.

Burning trees was a lot like burning books, and you know that they say about burning books: if they can burn books, it's not a long time before they're burning people.

Sakura burnt buildings.

Not people.

And she didn't smoke –not really, because she kind of thought it was disgusting, and it made for terrible dinner conversation–, but sometimes there was just this feeling in her body, where her stomach would drop to her toes, and bile would rise in her throat, and she could just feel the vomit –could just _feel_ it– sloshing around in her stomach. It was like being trapped, trapped in a cage, and Sakura was claustrophobic. Did you know that? She was, she was claustrophobic, and it was a cage with solid walls, and it was closing in, closing in, it was _closing in_, and she couldn't escape it, couldn't breathe, and–

And then she'd pull a cigarette out, light it up, breathe the nicotine in, and feel her lungs expand out and collapse in as she breathed. The world would shrink back to normal size, and she'd be okay, for a little while.

But it was happening more and more often, and sometimes Sakura thought she was going just a little bit crazy.

"Hey, Sasuke."

He was sitting underneath a green-lit tree in the middle of a gold sun-soaked field of grass. He did that, sometimes.

"Sakura."

She couldn't see his eyes. Sakura walked into the shade, blissfully cooler then the blister-heat that was anywhere in the sun. The glare of noon was heavy, sticking strands of hair to the back of Sakura's neck.

"It's done."

Sasuke nodded, and Sakura thought she saw respect in his gaze. It was trained on something far, far, far away, somewhere off on the horizon, and she knew he was thinking of that far place.

They'd grown up in a tiny town.

They were using each other. That was really all that it was. Really. Sometimes, whenever Ino heard Sakura say that, she would laugh, head thrown back, hair cascading down her back like waves of golden silk. Sakura would hate her just a little bit.

But that was a secret. And it was only sometimes.

Sakura really wanted to _go_; just drive until her eyes blurred and she couldn't see straight. That was what she wanted.

Sasuke was a good option, for that.

Even if they were using each other.

It was a business agreement.

Sometimes, burning things was the only way to get out. And sometimes, when Sakura wasn't looking, Sasuke would sneak into her brain, like some slow drip of poisonous fumes, sick and some imaginary fluorescent colour, a noxious miasma that Sakura didn't know how to deal with.

He was good at infecting every single little pore in Sakura's skin, until she didn't know up from down, right from wrong, good from bad.

Maybe that was why she was burning things.

But probably not.

—

He was so deeply ingrained, that sometimes, Sakura would sometimes lie in bed at night, and talk to herself. Or to Ino. Or to Karin. Or to the shadows on the wall, who were like angels but with broken wings.

He had her right where he wanted her, and Sakura knew that.

She would lay on her bed, in that dark and quiet place, and talk.

Sometimes, the conversations make sense. Most times, they didn't. Either way, the exchanges with the wall shadow-friends go like this:

"...and he's perfect, he's _perfect_, shadow. I can't do perfection. Because I choke and he makes me crazy and it's like run-on sentences without punctuation when he's around and I talklikethis because I can't get all the words out even when I want to and I swear I _swear_ I don't mean to do this to myself but it's always _always_ him always always always…"

She trailed off into soft mutterings about how the world was unfair. Unbalanced.

Sakura could do unbalanced.

(_After all, sometimes she felt like she was digging her own grave, six feet deep and not hit rock bottom yet_.)

—

Sakura didn't even really know where they were. It was all purple dusk and soft, red clouds painted across the sky by messy, childish fingers. Sakura looked at Sasuke, and wondered about fire licking up wood paneling and being crazy.

They really had nothing to do with each other, but Sasuke made that, and eight million other things, seem painfully possible.

Sakura didn't believe in love—she'd seen enough people be hurt by it, enough marriages end, enough screaming families—she'd seen enough to know that it didn't exist. It was a violent chemical reaction in the brain, she knew, she _knew_ that; she knew it well, that cold hard fact which governed her existence.

Love didn't exist.

And if it did, Sakura didn't have time for it. Like emotional anaesthesia, Sakura didn't care, didn't want, didn't _feel_—her only object was to get away from this tiny town, and maybe actually _do_ something with her life. Sasuke was just someone helping her along the way.

Sakura was getting better at lying to herself.

It was actually kind of sick.

She lay back against the hood of his truck, and stared at the darkening sky. Being around Sasuke was a lot like watching a train wreck; she would stare and stare and stare, even until hours after it was done, and everyone had gone home, and, _god_, was there even a point, anymore?

"You okay?"

His voice was a low rumble. It startled Sakura; had she been anyone else, she would have jumped.

"Define 'okay'," she replied, softly.

He chuckled dryly, and said nothing.

Sakura thought of deserts and autumn leaves, late-summer heat and out of place, cold rain. She thought of the skeletal remains of the houses, and the stench of gasoline and cigarettes and sweat. She thought of city lights and running away and pencils stuck in hair like clips, like childhood, maybe.

"I just want to _go_, Sasuke. That's it."

"Hn."

At least it was acknowledgement. He was looking down at her, gaze focused intently on her face. "Sakura. Sit up."

She did, movements sharp and jerky. Un-oiled machinery came to mind. She felt like she was suffocating. She couldn't breathe, couldn't breathe, _couldn't breathe_, and the sky was closing in, and _oh god_, this wasn't claustrophobia, this was–

Sasuke was cradling her head in his hands.

–something else entirely. His hands were hot on her face; fire hot, burn hot, flames against her cheeks, and she was burning, burning like the buildings, and was that gasoline? She could smell gasoline–

He was very, very close.

–yes, gasoline, that was gasoline, Sasuke always smelled like gasoline, but on him it wasn't so bad, wasn't so bad, didn't smell like death and fire and the end of the world. It smelled like Sasuke and, god, this was a side of him that she never never never saw–

"Sakura."

They were breathing the same air, and Sakura would have started to hyperventilate, but he made the world shrink back to normal, and she didn't want him to go away. "Yes?"

"I am going to kiss you."

"That's okay," she said. Her lips barely moved.

And he did.

Afterwards, Sakura lay still, and _breathed_.

They weren't good for each other; she knew that, she'd always known that. And love—love didn't exist, not to Sakura.

But Sasuke—Sasuke made Sakura want to _try_.

So she kissed him again and again, mouth painfully dry, teeth clashing. It wasn't about love or anything like that—it was about escaping something they both hated, and running away, and burning buildings.

So Sakura lay still, and watched the sky fly overhead.

There were still more bridges to burn.

But they would burn them together. And that made all the difference.

—

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.

_fin_.

**notes2**: "We should buy an island and make it legit."  
**notes3**: no, _seriously_.  
**notes4**: please review. it's all happy-making, and what-not. :)


	29. life, ever after

**disclaimer**: don't make me set a tiger on your face.  
**dedication**: to sonya and les. legit. also to Elle and Briony. you're so _cute_.  
**notes**: may or may not have been written entirely to Framing Hanley.  
**notes2**: i look so good without you, babe. :)  
**notes3**: also, this is the longest one-shot i've ever written. aren't i _awesome_?

**title**: life, ever after  
**summary**: When Sasuke moved into the abandoned house at the top of the hill, he hadn't been expecting the garden, or the dead girl who inhabited it. — Sasuke/Sakura; 29/5o.

—

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It was an old house.

There was a certain charm to it; it a decrepit, neglected way, anyway. It stood atop the highest hill in the vicinity. Once, it had likely been a beautiful place, but time has taken that away from it. The oak panelling was a pathetic sort of dark with a fresh coat of stain, but the old silver grain was still visible beneath. The electrical wiring was ancient, and looked to be about ready to give out, and set the entire place on fire. There was a thick coat of dust along the windowsills, and the scent of age stained the air in a way that no lemon scent of clean could ever wipe away. Late evening sunlight poured in through the old-glass windows, and caught on the dust floating in the air.

Sasuke actually almost grinned.

It was exactly what he'd been looking for. Old, empty for a long time, and _quiet_. That was the most important thing: it was _quiet_, and no one would bother him. He would be left alone, to live as he so chose. Naruto wouldn't be able to come barging in at all hours of the night, drunk off his ass, just-as-drunk girl hanging off his arm, and Sasuke would not be subjected to the subsequent moaning and thumping of coitus.

Sasuke suppressed a shudder.

Coitus. Tch.

He shook his head to himself, and lugged his second suitcase inside. The movers would be there the next day with the rest of his things; a couch, a bed frame, a dresser, and a bookshelf. Several boxes of books would be along, as well.

Sasuke liked to read. He read a lot. People who read a lot said _he_ read a lot, and people who didn't read said that he read obsessively. Not that the opinions of other people mattered all that much to Sasuke; that would mean that he cared about what they thought, and thankfully, he didn't. He'd much rather they let him alone.

The house creaked in welcome, and Sasuke nodded quiet at it in return; it would only make sense to acknowledge the place that would be his home. He closed the door behind him, and waited for the echoes to dissipate.

Perfect silence.

Sasuke sighed in relief.

Home.

He plodded upstairs, threw himself down on the freshly-made mattress, and closed his eyes. Night was falling as the sun set. Darkness came early and easy, in Konoha. The sun began to sink behind the horizon, and the golden light in Sasuke's room turned to the purple of dusk, and then the thick black of night-time.

He lay on the bed, motionless on the sheets, and listened to the sounds of the night filter in through the open pane. The low hum of a cricket. A sharp, loud cry from some sort of bird. The soft thrust of the wind through the trees right next to the window. There were others, too, but Sasuke ignored them in favour of listening to the wind.

There were many trees on the property, Sasuke had discovered. Rising tall about Sasuke's line of vision, it was likely they were almost as old as the house itself, possibly older, and that was probably saying something. From what Sasuke had been told of the place, it was more then a hundred years old, and had been empty for a long, long time.

It was an old house.

—

Sasuke awoke to the sound of birds chirping. He sat up, and looked about. He was completely alone. He had not moved during the night, and the sheets had remained unwrinkled, but Sasuke stripped the bed, and re-made it, anyway. He gave it a satisfied nod, and quietly padded downstairs.

The kitchen was white and empty, and looked out onto the garden. Sasuke walked to the window, and stared out.

It had probably been a striking garden, once. But, like the rest of the house, the taint of age had smeared away its former splendour. The grass grew wild, waist high and a tangle of gold and green—it had been left to seed, and was a mixture of the natural grasses and weeds. The rose bushes had grown higher than Sasuke's head, thorns a snarl around the lovely, pale yellow flowers. The trees, too, were disproportionately large, in the back.

Sasuke stared at it, galled.

_That_ was to be his next project. Everything else could wait.

And so he began.

He gathered his deceased mother's gardening tools—she would have been amused, he thought, oddly happy. He wasn't even putting up a fuss. He smirked, a little wryly, at the thought of his mother.

He missed her, he did.

He shook the thought of her away, and went to change into a pair of decaying jeans. Black with grime and shiny along the creases, they were his oldest and often, they were the jeans he wore to fix cars; the dirt would never wash out and therefore, there was absolutely no point in even trying.

If Naruto had taught Sasuke anything, it was that most times, it was better to leave lost causes alone.

The garden, however, was not a lost cause, and so he would work on that.

(Who was he kidding; Sasuke was the kind of person that _was_ a lost cause; too stubborn to see reason, too rich to spend it all in a single lifetime, and far, _far_ too anti-social for his own good. Saving other lost causes had become a sort of twisted hobby of his.

That was kind of why he was friends with Naruto, in the first place.)

He trudged outside, scissors, rake, and shovel in hand. The world was splashes of bright blue against a mostly cloudy sky.

Sasuke headed to the garden gate. It screeched, rusted from rain, having gone unoiled for so long. He pushed it open, and found himself facing the overgrown garden.

It was seething with life. He stood there, and enjoyed the cacophony of chirping coming from all directions. It was rather cheerful in nature.

He stood there for another moment.

And then a shriek tore through his reverie.

"ACK—WHO ARE YOU? WHAT ARE YOU—GET OUT, GET OUT!"

Sasuke whipped to his left, the direction from where the shriek had come from.

He was astonished to see a _girl_ standing there.

She looked young—perhaps eighteen. She was short. Her hair was a misfortunate shade of pink (one that Sasuke would never have wished on anyone—rather, he had never seen such a shade as _hair_ before). Her eyes were green, and snapping sharply at him. Her hands were fisted in the fabric of her dress, on slim hips.

He stared at her, bemused.

"I _told_ you to _get out_!" she snapped at him, furious.

He simply continued to stare at her.

"Are you deaf? I told you to. _Get. Out._ And I mean _NOW_!"

"What are you doing in here?" Sasuke asked her, completely passing over her question—who was this girl to order him out of his own garden?

"I _live_ here! In that house? You see it, that big one right behind you—oh, you wouldn't happen to be the new gardener, would you? If you are, I'm so sorry, my name is Sakura!"

Sasuke blinked at her. "No, I'm not."

The girl—Sakura?—raised an eyebrow at him. "Then who _are_ you? And _why_ are you in my garden?"

Sasuke raised a slow eyebrow in return. "_I_ live _there_," he told her, and pointed at the old house.

Sakura narrowed her eyes. "No, you don't."

"Yes, I _do_," Sasuke actually stressed the words.

Sakura stopped, and looked at him very carefully, for a minute. "You know it's haunted, right?"

"What?"

"Yeah. It's haunted. I live there, I would know!"

"Sakura. It is not haunted."

A strange smile spread across her face. "Oh, yes, it is."

"How do you know?" he asked, bored.

"Because I'm the one haunting it."

—

Gobsmacked. He was gobsmacked.

The girl that had stood in front of him, that day, had _looked_ solid enough. She'd looked alive and warm and solid, and there had been just no fucking way that she was a ghost (for that matter, Sasuke didn't really didn't believe in ghosts—there was nothing to prove they existed, and Sasuke liked evidence; he liked proof, because Sasuke didn't like to take things on faith alone).

But then he saw her walk through a closed door, and all his disbelief went out the window.

She was an odd girl.

(Er, an odd _dead_ girl, that is. That, on it's own, should have said something about the situation as a whole.)

She spent most of her time in the garden, he'd noticed; she absolutely hated it when he tried to tame it, give it some sense of direction. She'd have a freak out, and Sasuke wouldn't see her for a day or two.

And then he would wake to her version of vengeance, be it frogs in his shower or water all over the old, hardwood floor.

It would have amused Sasuke, if it hadn't been so bloody _annoying_.

She sat on his kitchen table, swinging bare legs back and forth, a child in a beautiful girl's body.

"How did you die?"

The words were out before Sasuke could stop them.

"How did I die?" she asked, rhetoric. Her eyes took on a faraway look, and Sasuke regretted asking immediately.

"It was a long time ago," she murmured. "I got sick—really, really sick. And I died. It's not as complicated as some people make it out to be."

She stopped speaking, and smiled wistfully at him.

Sasuke swallowed the lump in his throat. He almost wanted to reach out and touch her; comfort her in the only way he knew how. Sasuke was no good at words, and he never had been. Touch was not his strong suit, either, but at the very least, it was something he _could_ do.

But Sakura was a ghost girl, not real flesh and blood, and Sasuke didn't want to destroy the illusion of fragile peace that they'd established in the times they'd been living together.

(Oh, Sasuke had gone through the denial—he'd told her to _go away, Sakura, you're ruining my silence_, and had ignored her for a week. She'd thrown a fit, and started to float in on his showers. The first time it had happened, he'd screamed like a girl and she'd laughed herself to hiccups. The fifth time it happened, Sasuke had sighed, and given in.

Sakura did exist, he decided, and, to his great displeasure, she was never going to let him live down that very girly scream.)

They were almost friends.

Winter came and went. Sasuke sat in front of roaring fires with his ghost-girl, and the fragile peace between them persisted, a shining gold thread of hope that hung between them.

Spring bloomed in April, and Sasuke watched Sakura dance between the just-beginning-to-flower bushes, laughing like a little girl.

He felt himself start to smile.

Horror over-took him, and he realized he was in love with her.

—

"Sasuke, you know… you've been—kinda weird, recently. What's wrong with you?" she demanded, one day in May.

Sasuke said nothing, and just stared at her, angry and mute. He loved her.

She was dead, and he loved her.

"Nothing," he said, voice strained. "Nothing's wrong."

"Bull," she replied, jaw taut, green eyes flashing, and Sasuke was reminded of the first time he'd ever seen her, standing in his garden, surrounded by seething life, with her arms crossed over her chest, and a scowl on her lips.

She'd picked up the word from him; it had happened that one time that Sasuke had allowed Naruto and his shy little girlfriend over. Swearing didn't suit Sakura, at all.

(Neither Naruto nor the shy little girlfriend had been able to see Sakura, but she kept tugging on Naruto's hair and hugging Hinata, and they'd both commented on it, and that was how Sasuke knew that Sakura wasn't just a figment of his imagination.)

"Sakura," he said, breathing through his nose to keep his temper in check. "It's nothing."

She took a step towards him, purposeful, worried. Her voice was low, when she spoke. "Sasuke. Just _tell_ me. What's wrong? Did you meet someone, or—?"

Sasuke _exploded_. "_No_, Sakura! There's no one, no one except for you!"

She stared at him, wide-eyed. "Wh-what?"

"…I love you," he said, at last. "I love you."

He strode forward, wrapped his arm around her very-much-alive waist, and pulled her flush against him.

"I love you," he said, again, and then his mouth was hot against hers, furious, insistent, and _wanting_.

Sakura let him kiss her for a full minute, before she shuddered, twined her arms around his neck, and kissed him back.

It was like rain and fireworks, every single cell sparking up with energy, pleasure soaking into his head, dizzy with need. Sasuke wanted to burrow into her body, wanted to keep her forever. She was happiness, light and life incarnate (which was kind of ironic because she _was_ a dead girl).

When Sasuke finally pulled away, to breathe, he leaned his forehead against hers, and stared down at her face.

Sakura's eyes were glazed. "What—what was… _that_?" she asked him, genuine and soft.

"I kissed you," Sasuke said. He thought it had been fairly self-explanatory, himself.

"Why…?" she asked.

"I love you," he said, again, again. The words felt right against his lips. He loved her, dead girl or not. He loved her, he did.

The colour drained from her face. "No," she whispered. "No, you don't. You can't."

Sasuke frowned. "I do love you, Sakura."

She shook her head, terror in her eyes. "No, Sasuke, you _can't_. I'm _dead_, remember?"

"You feel pretty alive to me," he muttered. He didn't understand what she was so afraid of.

She shrank away from him, and passed through the circle of his. It was like trying to catch smoke, and Sasuke's arms felt like he'd just shoved them into a bucket of ice-cold water.

"You're not supposed to love me back! It's not allowed!" she almost shouted at him. Her eyes were glassy.

"I—I have to—go," she said. Her face was turned towards the floor. She was shaking, and she started to disappear.

Panic shot through Sasuke, and he nearly toppled a table, trying to grab at her before she was gone completely. "_Sakura_!"

His arms closed around empty air.

He stood there for a long, long time.

She was gone.

The old house was empty. Sasuke was completely alone. He stomach churned. He was _completely_ alone, _again_.

He stood still, and listened.

Perfect silence.

Perfect silence.

—

Summer passed.

Sasuke didn't notice it, as it went. He wandered the over-grown estate in a fog, and felt a little like he was dying slowly, the same way the garden itself was. Sakura must have kept it alive, Sasuke thought, just by existing.

And she was gone, now.

He missed her. He missed her. He didn't know if he was ever going to stop missing her. With every breath, he missed her more.

Sasuke resolved to stop breathing.

—

Summer turned to fall, and then fall to winter. Naruto's wedding was to be in March. Sasuke would attend as the best man.

And he did.

His life fell back into the pattern it had had before he'd met a dead girl with a magical smile. He still avoided Naruto's overbearing presence like the plague, and he still refused most social events. But he no longer sought complete silence, and he avoided the garden with a determination that would have impressed even the most obstinate old donkey.

He was still quiet.

Sometimes, he would hear a peal of laughter, high-pitched and happy, and he'd whip around in search of it. The person it had come from was always elusive, but then, he only ever heard it in the midst of a crowd. Sasuke put it down to the noise of the three, and told himself he was not going crazy.

It even worked, for a while.

And then, he began to forget.

—

He finished his doctorate when he was twenty-six.

Sasuke walked into his home. The old house creaked in welcome. At that moment, it was exactly the way it had been, when he had bought it. A beautiful, old house. Big. Big enough to raise a family.

But Sasuke was in no mind to have children.

"Sakura," he told the old, empty house. "I miss you. I just came to say… goodbye."

He didn't know why he needed to say it, just that he did. He needed her to understand.

"I'm going away. Moving. To Suna. I won't be coming back. I'm going to sell this place."

He paused, and waited.

Nothing.

So he continued. "I came to say goodbye," he said again. He didn't say anything about closure, but that was what this was; he needed the closure.

Sasuke had never had the chance to say goodbye,

He looked up at the vaulted ceiling. He loved her, he loved her, he loved her, even three years later, her loved her. He would always love her.

"Goodbye," he muttered, and stuffed his hands in the pockets of his coat. The word echoed.

Nothing.

Sasuke, dressed head to toe in mourner's black, turned his back and left, with the idea that he was never to return.

—

He moved into an apartment in Suna. It was painfully modern; black granite, clear glass, and silver steel were the main components of the building's architecture.

Sasuke privately missed the quiet echo of old, polished wood and spacey rooms. The acoustics in his apartment had nothing on that sense on space, _nothing_.

Two weeks later, he drove to the hospital. He donned a white lab coat, and went to find his supervisor.

She was a crotchety old hag (Sasuke's ignored that he was using vocabulary worthy of Naruto), who went by the name of Chiyo. She surveyed him through squinty eyes and glasses. Her iron-grey hair was pulled back into a tight, no-nonsense bun.

The first thing she did was look him up and down, twice. Then a strange, twisted grin crossed her lips. And then she picked up the phone on her desk, punched three numbers into it, and barked "Karui! Send Haruno up! I need to speak to her, _now_!"

The old woman glanced at Sasuke, and then at the chair in front of her desk.

Sasuke raised and eyebrow at her.

Chiyo glared.

Sasuke hastily sat.

She gave him a look entirely too satisfied, and then paid no heed to him. She shuffled some papers around, on her desk, and ignored Sasuke completely.

The door was ripped open, and someone came bursting in. Her breathing was shallow, like she'd been running. "What do you _want_, Chiyo-baa? I just got out of surgery!"

Sasuke went stiff.

That _voice_.

He twisted around, and his breath caught in his throat. _Sakura_.

She looked older then he remembered. But her eyes were the same, violently green and snapping. Her hair was cut short, brushing her jaw line, and not the long, carefully-cared-for locks he remembered, but the colour, the colour was the same, that ridiculous pale pink. Even her stance was the same; she still crossed her arms over her chest, feet planted shoulder-width apart, a scowl on her lips.

And she was _beautiful_.

Chiyo was talking. "—is Uchiha Sasuke, Sakura. He's our newest neurosurgeon. I expect you to show him the ropes, get him set up in his office, and the like. Questions?"

Sakura stared stonily at Chiyo. She hadn't even looked at Sasuke yet. "Why do you _always_ pick me to do this? _Why_? Can't an intern do it?"

Chiyo smiled sweetly at the scowling girl-who-should-have-been-dead. "Because, Sakura, my dear, it is funny."

Sakura groaned, and Sasuke almost choked at how familiar the sounds was. Three years, almost four, and he still knew the sounds she made.

His ghost girl.

Sakura addressed him. "Well, we're stuck together, Sasu–ke–" she stopped, and looked at him. Really _looked_.

Sasuke thought he saw a flash of recognition in her eyes, but then it was gone. He stood up—he still towered over her—and nodded. "Lead the way, Sakura," he told her gently.

He watched her swallow, and she nodded in reply. He followed her out, and ached to touch her hair.

Just as the door closed, he thought he heard Chiyo cackling.

—

Fall came. The leaves on the trees in Konoha would have just been turning colour, and beginning to fall. The garden would have been golden.

And Sakura was just the same.

Sometimes Sasuke thought that maybe he had dreamed her. Sometimes he thought he was going crazy. Sometimes he thought that she knew something.

But that didn't explain they way she avoided touching him.

Once, their fingers had brushed when she was passing him a follow-up document about one of the surgeries he'd preformed. And electric current had passed between their hands, and she'd squeaked in a way that had Sasuke in half a mind to shove her against a wall and find out if this new Sakura tasted the same as the old Sakura.

But he never did.

—

"What's _wrong_ with you?" she demanded oh him, one day. He'd been working at the hospital by then for almost a full half-year.

The words froze him at his desk. He stood up, slowly, and looked at her. "Nothing. Nothing's wrong."

The déjà vu threatened to stop his heart. She looked frustrated, so frustrated.

"How do I _know_ you?" she burst out, the emotion escaping what Sasuke knew to be very strong reservations.

Sasuke stuffed his hands in his lab-coat pockets.

"You must be mistaken," he said quietly, and saying those words physically _hurt_. "We've never met before this year, Sakura."

"That's a _lie_!" she screeched. She stomped towards him, her fists clenched at her sides. They stood nose-to-nose, Sakura on her tiptoes. She was glaring furiously up at him.

"I _know_ you, Sasuke, but I don't know _how_, and it drives me _crazy_!" she hissed.

Sasuke's already-thin self-control _snapped_. His hands found her hips, and his lips found her ear. "I loved you," he whispered to her. "I loved you a long time ago."

She didn't move, her head bent. Sasuke' heartbeat was loud, so loud, and he was certain that the rest of the world could hear it, too. He lowered his head to her, and nudged her face up, until he was looking her in the eyes.

He had no idea if this was going to work.

But he touched his mouth to hers, anyway.

She whispered a soft "Oh…"

And then she passed out.

Sasuke caught her body as she crumpled towards the floor. She was warm. Alive. He could hear a heart-beat. He could feel her breathing.

Alive.

His ghost-girl.

—

The conversation went like this:

"_How did it happen?"_

"_I don't know. I just… woke up. I just… was."_

"…_Are you happy?"_

"_Yes."_

Sasuke nodded, then, and let her stare at the ceiling of his apartment. He was just waiting for proof of sunsets and silhouette dreams.

She made them possible.

_Dead girls_, he thought, and shook his head.

—

Two weeks later, they stood hand in hand outside of the old house.

It was an old house. A beautiful, old house. Big. Big enough to raise a family.

Sasuke looked up at it, and then down at the girl-who-should-have-been-dead. She was looking up at the house, too, and he watched the past reflect in her eyes. He watched a dead girl come home in the body of a girl older then she possibly could have been, and younger then should have been possible.

Sometimes, Sasuke confused himself, too.

"C'mon," he said quietly, and gently tugged her inside.

All was exactly as he'd left it. He shed his jacket, and hung it carefully in the closet in the front hall. The polished hardwood beneath his feet was smooth and cool, the chill of an unlived-in house seeping up through his legs.

He'd missed this place.

They walked through familiar halls, fingers twined together.

Sasuke could feel Sakura's pulse beating, strong and steady, against his flesh. It gave him pause every time; she was alive, alive, _alive_, and half the time, he still had trouble convincing himself of it.

He had trouble rationalizing it, as well.

But then he found himself thinking that perhaps an explanation was not necessary; it was the here and the now that mattered. He couldn't tell her what he didn't know, so he didn't even try.

He clutched her fingers a little tighter, and gestured towards the garden.

Sakura just nodded, her fingers unconsciously tightening. Sasuke didn't move to extract himself from her grip.

Sometimes he just understood.

This was one of those times.

They left the old house, and walked towards the rusted gate. Sasuke frowned; it was far worse then he remembered. He nearly broke the latch, trying to get it open.

"It's not—"

"Let me try," Sakura said, quiet, a look of concentration on her features.

She touched the latch, and the rust melted away as if it had never been. The latch shone new-chrome bright, and Sakura shrugged helplessly.

Sasuke shrugged in return. He took her hand, and led her into the garden.

It was dead.

It was _dead_.

The ground was grey-brown, covered with dead leaves—so much so that the cobbled path through the garden was barely visible. The trees, too, had lost the healthy, dark brown bark, and stood stark and bare, reaching towards the sky, branches clawing at the clouds. Nothing grew, and the remnants of dead bushes and stalks of dead plants sat about, looking sad and lonely.

Sakura looked troubled, and knelt. She touched her fingers to the ground, and mumbled "Oh…"

A small green shoot sprung up, a simple two rounded leaves and a pale green stem, and nestled against her fingers. She looked up at Sasuke, and blinked. "What—?"

"Figured as much," Sasuke murmured to himself, and pulled her away from the ground. She jerked up, and smiled at him as she stumbled into the circle of his arms.

It had all started here.

And here it would all end.

Sasuke leaned down, and methodically sealed his lips over hers.

The garden burst to life around them, and all was silent.

—

.

.

.

.

.

_fin_.

**notes4**: according to my anthropology teacher, i've never even had an original thought in my life, and, weirdly enough, it's true. anyone care to dispute?  
**notes5**: please review. :)


	30. a symposium on nasty habits

**disclaimer**: highly unlikely.  
**dedication**: to my cat and my little brother for trying to cheer me up. to my best friends because ILY. and especially to my FUTURESPOUSE!**les**. she knows she's sexy.  
**notes**: i'm really getting annoyed with this _being sick_ shit, okay?  
**notes2**: "Did I just use 'bacon' as verb? _Maybe_."

**title**: a symposium on nasty habits  
**summary**: "Shit's real, Sasuke." Weddings and nostalgia always made for a nice shot of misery for a liar and a fire starter. — Sasuke/Sakura; 3o/5o.

—

.

.

.

.

.

They met in high school.

It was this place of clichés and school dances, and football games and music lessons. It was this place where Sakura was the girl that every guy wanted to bang. It was this place where Sasuke was the guy that every girl wanted to date.

Or something like that.

(_Actually, Sakura was just a girl, and Sasuke was just a boy. That's how most things start, you know. Just a girl and a just a boy. But those things grow and grow, until they've taken on a life of their own, and everyone loses control. At the end of it all, Sakura wouldn't be __**just**__ a girl, and Sasuke wouldn't be __**just**__ a boy._

_They would be grown-ups, jaded and sick with themselves. They would be teenagers, wrong and stuck and __**lost**__. They would be children in their children, but that wouldn't be for a long time, yet_.)

He had cold eyes, and she had a lip-gloss smile that didn't sit right with him.

They didn't hate each other; Sakura didn't _hate_, and Sasuke just didn't care enough to waste the energy.

The Game started when Naruto (the mutual best friend; Sakura had known, and had beaten on, Naruto since they were children. They'd gone to school together. Sasuke had apparently lived next door to the sunnily-dispositioned blond all his life. Sakura didn't understand how they'd never met before) introduced them.

It had only been a sly, coy glance beneath lowered lashes in between classes. It was just two acquaintances sharing a glance or two.

She one-upped him, the next time it happened, because she was holding some guy's hand.

Sasuke smirked at her, not sure why he was angry, and gave her a slow nod.

(_I'm kind of a big deal_.)

That was when it really started.

—

They… _flirted_ (that wasn't even the right word—it wasn't flirting, this thing they did, between lowered lashes and slow, coy smiles) in the hallways. Fingertips brushed, even as her fingers were looped through someone else's, and his hand was in some girls back pocket.

That was how they talked.

That was how they played.

Three years went by.

And then they graduated.

—

But, in the time before graduation (and it could have been eleventh, twelfth; no one knows, no one remembers. Not even Sakura, and she was a doctor. Doctors weren't supposed to forget things like that, but she did), there was this:

No one _meant_ to be cruel. It just kind of… _happened_.

"Boyfriend?"

"Well… yeah."

"Hn."

They were both sick of each other, sick of this game, sick of this whole thing. Sometimes, lying on the grass in the rain was the only left to do for anyone who wanted to _feel_.

Sakura stretched her fingers towards the sky. Her hands were small; tapered fingers end in rounded nails, unpainted and unadorned. They were the hands of someone who was silly and simple, of someone who kicked up fresh-fallen leaves and jumps in puddles and who laughs because there's nothing else to do.

Sakura wondered where that girl went.

And sometimes, this new girl that had taken that girls place made Sakura sick, She made herself sick, sometimes, she really, really did.

"What are we doing, Sasuke?"

"Hn?"

"What is… _this_?" and she indicated their prone bodies, thrown down on the ground, rain soaking them both. Sasuke shook dark, wet hair out of his eyes, and Sakura couldn't help but stare.

"This is us," he said.

Like that explained it all.

Sakura sighed, a great expelling of air from somewhere deep in her chest. "We didn't even know each other before last year. Don't tell me this is 'us', when we both know it isn't. There isn't even an 'us', because I'm dating—"

"Don't even _go_ there," he cut her off with a growl.

Sakura shut her mouth.

They stared at each other.

"I don't belong to anyone," she told him, quiet. "Not _anyone_. No one except for myself. And I can date who I want. It's not like it's any of your business, anyway."

She got up. The squelch of water through her shoes made Sasuke want to wince, but he didn't. He waited until she was long, long gone before he let himself breathe, again.

(_People just… __**don't**__, you know? They just __**don't**__._

_It's too bad no one thought to tell Sasuke that_.)

—

High school had been over a long time.

"I _hate_ this dress, Sakura!"

A really, _really_ long time.

Sakura rolled her eyes. "Karin, calm down, you do _not_ hate that dress—I was there when you picked it, and you _cried_, remember?"

The wail that came next had Sakura tempted to leave, and ignore her wailing sister to deal with the dress on her own.

But that would be mean.

Sakura took a slow, deep breath, and looked Karin over.

It was really a gorgeous wedding gown; pure white and strapless, with a crimson posy on the hip, it was every inch Karin, personified. However, the bride did _not_ look happy. Karin's hands were fisted on her hips, her eyes were narrowed, and she was _glaring_ at herself in the mirror.

"It's _awful_," was all she said.

"It's _not_ awful," Sakura countered. "It's just wedding jitters. You haven't seen Suigetsu in a few days, and—"

Karin growled, and Sakura grinned and tucked her hands behind her back.

"I don't—I'm not—what am I _doing,_ _Sakura_, I can't _do_ this! This is—"

"Karin," Sakura said gently. "Calm down. This has been a long time coming, we both know that."

A sigh escaped the red-headed bride. "It's just—Sak, all we do is fight! What happens when—when—I don't know, when we stop fighting to rile each other up and just _fight_?"

Sakura stared at her, neutral-faced. "Do you think that'll happen?"

"I don't know."

"Karin, there's a _reason_ that you and Suigetsu do this—this _thing_. It's like—"

"Like how you and Sasuke were."

Sakura shot her a sharp glance. Karin had always been very good at bringing Taboo Subjects right to the surface; Sakura didn't know _why_, but then, that was too much like Karin to question.

"Don't remind me," Sakura muttered.

Karin looked away.

Sakura pretended not to catch the smile.

—

The bridesmaid's dresses were _ugly_.

_Seriously_.

Sakura, in her awful sea-foam green bridesmaid dress (Sakura _swore_ this was Karin's revenge for all the unwanted shopping trips with Ino and/or the impossible blonde girl stuffing Karin into awful clothing) stood behind the thick wooden doors, and listened as the hum of a hundred and sixty-seven guests quieted, and the wedding march started.

The flower girl (one of Hinata's little cousins who had taken to Karin like a fish to water) disappeared beyond the oak doors, dropping peony petals and dragging the ring-bearer along behind her.

Then Hinata flitted out.

Then Ino.

Sakura took a breath, and walked out on cue.

This wasn't her wedding, it didn't mean as much. But it still meant _something_; it meant… Sakura didn't even know. Maybe it meant that Karin was growing up (or not), and maybe it meant that love was life and life was love (or not) and maybe it meant that Sakura was just—_waiting_ (or not).

Maybe it meant a lot of things, or maybe it meant nothing at all.

Sakura raised her eyes, and grinned at the groom.

He looked _dreadfully_ nervous.

Sakura didn't blame him. Karin was the type to get cold feet, but this—Sakura wished she could have told him not to worry, because, while Karin was kind of a masochist, she wasn't _that_ much of a masochist.

Sakura had walked half the aisle, before she glanced at the Best Man.

And she only barely managed to not let her jaw drop.

_Sasuke_.

—

The reception was _gorgeous_.

There was a live band, playing something between smooth jazz and latin enthusiastically in the corner. There was ridiculously good, ridiculously expensive food. There was laughter and talk among dim lighting and bunches of peonies.

There was also an open bar.

Sakura really did not expect to remember anything. _At all_.

Eighth shot of vodka, straight, and the Maid of Honour was definitely far past _tipsy_ (but shhhh, don't tell, Karin wouldn't be happy). She giggled, and leaned against the bar. "Hey, barkeep, could I have—?"

A dark, low baritone voice trickled over her skin, slipped down her spine. "She's cut off. Orders from the bride."

Sakura looked over her shoulder.

…_Stupid_ Sasuke.

"Noooo," she drawled. "Don' wanna be cu'off. S'borinnnnng."

"Come along, Sakura," he said, and carefully pulled her away from the bar.

Sakura grumbled. "Don' like youuu."

Sasuke seemed to twitch, and continued to drag her away from the bar.

Sakura was _not impressed_. "She did'n' tell me, ya kno'."

"Hn?"

"Tha' you were gonna be here. She did'n' tell me."

"Hn."

"Tha's'not an ans-er, Sa-su-ke. 'Coz, y'know, I wouldn'a come if I ha' known."

"And _you_ are drunk, Sakura. I don't expect you to remember any of this in the morning."

Sakura grumbled, and stared up at him.

In her hideous sea-foam bridesmaid's gown, Sakura, with her pink hair and her wide green eyes, looked like some sort of psychotic mermaid bent on world destruction, probably because her beautiful under-the-sea-world had been corrupted and polluted, dirt and gasoline clogging her veins and _I can't breathe, Sasuke, I can't breathe_. She was looking at him like she wanted him to change it, to make it better, to _save me, please, I can't keep this up_.

(Sometimes, Sasuke confused himself. His analogies sucked, and he knew it.)

"…You're dumb," she told him.

Because _that_ made sense.

Sasuke hauled her out of the hotel's ballroom, her alcohol-giddy body pliant and soft in his arms.

He ignored how warm she was.

He ignored that they'd been eyeing each other all night, a pair of wary tigers stuck in a too-small cage.

He ignored a lot of things.

Sasuke was good at ignoring things.

—

"You can let me go, Sasuke. I'm not drunk."

They were half-way back up to the room. Sasuke rolled his eyes; what _was_ it with drunks and insisting that they were perfectly fine? He wouldn't have left Sakura alone, right then, even if he wanted to.

"Sakura, you're drunker then I've ever seen you."

"I'm not drunk. Really. I can walk a straight line—here, I'll show you!"

She wiggled out of his arms.

And proceeded to walk a perfectly straight line.

Sasuke was appalled.

She turned around, and grinned at him, her eyes reflecting no light back at him. She just stood there, poised on the balls of her feet, torn somewhere between the fight and flight instinct, smiling like a panther in the night.

"My sister is going to _kill_ me," she said.

"Hn?"

"Because she knows that I never get drunk at weddings. Actually, I don't get drunk ever. It's like watching my pay checks run down the proverbial drain."

"Hn."

She laughed, then. "My tolerance is through the roof. Don't worry; I won't drink you under the table. Your ego will not be compromised."

He grunted, and avoided looking at her.

"Been a long time."

He nodded, and said nothing.

Unfinished business.

"So we won't be sleeping together. I don't sleep with assholes."

It was really a _nasty_ thing.

Sasuke looked at her, and thought that growing up had changed her. The Sakura he had known, the girl with the innocence and the smile and the _good_, she was gone. Instead, there was this jaded, beautifully cracked young woman in her place.

She had a knowing smile and cynical eyes, and Sasuke didn't like her.

Everything about her emanated _I don't need you, I never did, I never will. Get over yourself_, and Sasuke couldn't figure out what had happened to make her like this.

They stood three feet apart, measuring.

Sakura raised an eyebrow at him and smiled in that slow way that girls had that really just _creeped_ him out, sometimes. "Shit's real, Sasuke."

"Hn."

"I'm kind of a big deal."

"I can see that."

"Sure you do."

She walked off, and Sasuke felt like he'd just fucked something up.

He followed her anyway.

—

Back up against his wall, darkness, heavy breathing, mouths fused, fingers in his hair, wrapped too close, _heat_.

"I thought you didn't sleep with assholes," Sasuke murmured against her throat.

"I _lied_."

—

"You awake?"

It was early, early morning—the sun wasn't even up yet, and the room was still completely dark.

"Hn."

"Thought so."

"Hn."

"Want me to go?"

"No."

Sakura nodded, and knew that he felt the movement. She'd leave later—after she'd showered, maybe (after she got the smell of sex and sweat off of her skin).

"Where does this leave us?" she asked. Raised her arm, drew pictures on the far-away stuccoed ceiling, and thought of stars and ex-boyfriends and teenage mistakes.

"Where it always left us."

"Just a little too far to reach?"

"Hn."

Sakura shifted, and the sheet pulled away from too-hot skin. She shivered, her skin turning to gooseflesh. "…Do you ever miss anything so much it hurts?"

"Yes."

She smiled a little, in the quiet. She though he might have understood. "What do you miss the most?"

"Everything."

Sakura nodded again, grave.

"Will everything go back to the way it was yesterday? It should, right? Because—"

"I don't know, Sakura," and his voice was so gentle it almost broke her heart.

It shouldn't have been like this.

(_It never should have been like this_.)

They lay side by side, naked but not touching, and dreamed.

—

Eight hours later, Sakura sat in Sasuke's living room, wearing the shirt he'd been wearing the night before, and had thrown somewhere in his haste to get naked. It was white. The cuffs fell past her fingertips. She stood at the window, and looked out.

It was raining outside.

Sasuke, pajama pants hanging off his hips, came and stood beside her. Wound their fingers together. Stayed frozen, and waited for her reaction.

"I lied, you know."

"Hn?"

"A long time ago. When I said I had a boyfriend. I lied. I didn't."

"Huh."

"I lied a lot. I _lie_ a lot. I'm… not always a good person. I'm just—I'm human, you know? I make mistakes, a lot of them, actually. And I'm sorry for that."

"I know."

They stood together, and stared out at the rain.

"You."

"Hmn?"

"I missed you the most."

Sakura looked up at him, at her dark boy. At her beautiful, beautiful dark boy, who would always stand in half-shadows and watch her. Her beautiful dark boy, her fire starter.

"I missed you the most, too."

(_We're kind of a big deal_.)

They held hands, and watched the rain in silence.

—

.

.

.

.

.

_fin_.

**notes3**: iLike _down with webster_ just a liiiiitle bit too much.  
**notes4**: oh, i got nominated on 's Facebook Fanpage as "Author of the Month". i'm super-flattered; THANK YOU to whoever it was that nominated me! also, if it's not too much trouble, please go vote for me and/or leave a review?  
**notes5**: i love you people, really. :)


	31. iempire

**disclaimer**: disclaimed.  
**dedication**: to the girls with short skirts and long jackets (read: **the author appreciation guild)**.  
**notes**: kind of a re-write, except not. angels&airwaves does this to me. also, adam lambert sold out. i, sadly, actually approve of it. yes, i feel awful. & the trashier Ke$Ha gets, the more i love her. this does not make scientific sense.

**title**: i-empire  
**summary**: Your best friend is not your girlfriend. — Sasuke/Sakura; 31/5o.

—

.

.

.

.

.

—_good day_

"We're best friends, right, Sasuke-kun?"

Sensation:  
grass; under his back, cool, soft, oddly scratchy. Breeze; warm, the sun had set, but the heat and light of high summer lingered in the air, the sky dusty fushia. A girl's voice; lilting, little girl, sweet, Sakura.

In the dusky light, just-thirteen-year-old Sasuke turned his head, and looked at equally thirteen-year-old Sakura (she only had a few months on him, but she _never_ let him forget it).

"Hn."

"That's what I thought. You should talk more, y'know, Sasuke-kun. The girls are starting to think you're too weird for me to be friends with."

Sakura thought she heard him chuckle softly, a grown man trapped in an awkward, preteen body. "I do talk, Sakura."

"To me."

"To you.

"And Naruto."

"…And the dobe."

She giggled because he sounded so utterly _pained_. "And Kakashi-sensai."

Sasuke's eyes twitched. "I do not talk to that old pervert."

"Sure you don't, Sasuke-kun."

He said nothing, and just shook his head at the fading light above them, back and forth across the grass. Leave it to Sakura to think up some fanciful daydream, where Sasuke actually _liked_ their teacher. Sakura talked too much, asked questions, moved at light speed; Sasuke didn't even really know why he put up with her.

He shook his head again, gaze locked on the sky. The stars were just starting to twinkle, meek in the post-sunset sky. The Earth was fast falling asleep, and Sakura lay there next to him.

And it was right then that thirteen-year-old Uchiha Sasuke realized that Haruno Sakura was going to be the death of him.

—

—_distraction_

"We're best friends, right, Sasuke-kun?"

Sensation:  
plastic seat beneath him; hard. Wool pants; uncomfortable. Autumn sun through the window on the bare skin of his arms; heat, warmth, familiarity. Hiss of paper across his desk; Sakura was having a minor squabble with Naruto over the assignment they were in the midst of finishing. Laughter; loud and raucous, coming from somewhere to his left. Classroom setting.

Fourteen-year-old Sasuke grumbled. These people.

He was getting a headache.

"Hn."

He pressed his fingers to his temples.

"You look like you're in pain."

"_Hn_."

"Figured as much. Hold on, I'll go be a distraction, and then we can sneak out!"

Sasuke nodded, eyes closed.

Sakura, taller then Sasuke, dashed the window across the classroom. "OMIGOD, GUYS, COME AND LOOK! KURENAI-SENSEI, COME AND LOOK!"

"Sakura? What's going on?"

"COME AND _LOOK_!"

The class crowded around the window, and Sakura, a blur of pink, red, and green, squeezed out from among them. She rushed over, grabbed Sasuke hand, and her bag, and dragged him out of the classroom, a fleeting smile on her lips.

Best friends, indeed.

—

—_a little's enough_

"We're best friends, right, Sasuke?"

Sensation:  
Something moderately sweet on his tongue; marzipan? Mist-almost-drizzle on his face; wet and chilled. It was April; cold, watery, grey-skyed April. Water in his sneakers; _squishsquish-squishsquish-squishsquish_ with every movement.

Fifteen-year-old Sasuke shot a glance at just-sixteen Sakura through his bangs. She was chewing bubble-gum, blowing bubbles _pop-pop-pop_, violently pink as her hair against the pale sky, wrapped in a coat too heavy for the weather.

"Hn."

"There are definitely better ways to answer that question."

"Hn."

Sakura rolled her eyes, and sat back on the swing set. Her fingers were curled around the metal links, lined up neatly, perfect little rows of china-coloured flesh-and-bone wrapped around dull silver. She was shivering, the mist soaking into her hair, going dark fushia. She looked…

"You look like you're sad."

"Maybe I am," she said, and shrugged, looking upwards, sugar and spice but not everything nice, a lovely, breakable little doll that he'd grown up with.

"I notice, you know," he told her quietly.

"Notice what?"

"Everything."

But that posed more questions then it answered, and Sakura looked away. "I still smile."

"A little."

"A little is more then enough."

—

—_it hurts_

"We're best friends, right, Sasuke?"

Sensation:  
sheets; cotton, worn, well-known and washed many times over. Darkness, pressing in from all sides; safe, all enveloping. Sound; muted through the muffle of the walls. Autumn chill through the open window; ice cold November air. Girl; soft breathing, heavy weight, and the thick scent of want.

Seventeen-year-old Uchiha Sasuke was three inches from equally seventeen-year-old Haruno Sakura's lips.

"Go to sleep, Sakura.

"'Kay. Night-night, 'Suke."

Silence.

It was eleven-thirty-two.

She was asleep.

_In his bed_.

Silence.

They were best friends. _Best_ friends.

Breathing.

Sasuke swallowed.

Silence.

It was eleven-fifty-eight.

Her lips would be the last thing he would touch tonight, and she would never know. She was his best friend.

Not his girlfriend.

—

—_true love_

"We're best friends, right, Sasuke?"

Sensation:  
legs spread-eagle on the grass; soft blades beneath his fingertips. Solidity at his back; the rough bark of a tree. Dappled light; the sun was warm through the leaves. Heat at his side; Sakura, leaning against him, her hair in his nose.

"…Hn."

Eighteen-year-old Uchiha Sasuke was in love with nineteen-year-old Sakura Haruno. He'd come to terms with it.

But that didn't mean he was going to say anything.

He could feel her smiling, but he wasn't sure if that was melancholy or what. "Friends. We're friends. That's good."

Good?

No.

There was a difference between _good_ and _great_, and Sasuke knew, he _knew_, that they could be _great_. They could be _incredible_. They could be more than a house, more than a little lonely box that held them both. They could be more than stars in the sky. They could be more than the _sun_.

Sasuke looked down at the top of her bubblegum-pink head, and thought of bubbles and childhood and swinging so high that to fall would be death.

"No," he said. "No."

"Wha—no?"

"No," Sasuke repeated.

"No _what_?"

"Not friends. Not best friends."

Sakura was moving away. She was hurt. He didn't blame her.

"Then—what are you talking about; of course we're best friends! If we're not best friends, what _are_ we?"

He didn't like that she was still inching away from him. Sasuke set his jaw, and carefully slipped an arm around her waist.

"We're us."

Sakura looked affronted. "And what is—?"

She really did talk too much. Sasuke pulled her up on his lap, and muttered "Shut up."

"Uchiha Sasuke, you are _incorrigi_—!"

Sasuke grinned to himself, and kissed her quiet.

She blinked at him. "Not friends."

"Not friends," he affirmed, and kissed her again.

—

.

.

.

.

.

_fin_.

**notes2**: i… really like how this turned out, even tho' it's likely the most cliché thing I've ever written… like… _ever_. c'est incroyable!  
**notes3**: fluff. gotta love it.  
**notes4**: please review. :)


	32. flight risk

**disclaimer**: disclaimed.  
**dedication**: to **Caroline. you never got the chance to grow up, and i'm so, so sorry.**  
**notes**: :/ it's snowing. WHY IS IT SNOWING.  
**notes2**: you steal me away from my house in the dead of night, whisk me to McDicks, and then make me pay for your fries. WHAT KIND OF NOT-BOYFRIEND _ARE_ YOU?

**title**: flight risk  
**summary**: It's all train tracks and flannel shirts and grimy windows, falling in love and dead little girls. Selective blindness is an art form, you know. — Sasuke/Sakura; 32/5o.

—

.

.

.

.

.

—_before_

The trains run all the time.

All the time, they run. Along steel tracks and steel cables, they run and run, through the night, through the sleeping city. Little boxes of tin metal, unsafe, unsound, they run; the lifeblood of a city drowning in despair.

Sakura stares out a filthy window, and watches the far-away lights flicker.

"I can't save what's left of you," she tells the boy lying motionless on the bed.

The boy asks for nothing less the perfection. But Sakura does not have perfection to give. She has grubby cheeks and unsharpened knives, but she does not have perfection. She has short pink hair and dull green eyes, but she does not have perfection. She has a dying city and a house full of sickly orphans, but she does not have perfection.

The street-lamp outside the window burns on kerosene, and streaks of burnt oil run up the length of the interior of the once-clear glass, dimming the light down to nothing but a muted glow. It was barely enough to illuminate a small circle of ground right below the lamp.

The street is empty.

Sakura closes the curtain.

—

—_then_

"Moegi-chan, _please_ let Sasuke-kun alone."

The little girl, all clouds of blonde hair and questions on top of questions, looked up at Sakura through sleepy dark eyes. "Nee-chan, he's _mean_ to you."

"He doesn't mean to be," Sakura told her gently. They stood in the tiny kitchen, and Sakura wiped a dirty dish with a dirty rag. Moegi sat on the counter-top and swung her legs back and forth.

"Yes, he does," Moegi replied, a huff of a little girl on her lips, childish and immature, silverbell and silky in the dingy little kitchen.

Sakura thought that this little girl deserved so much, _so much_ better. Better then this old, decrepit apartment building, better then the train tracks and the transient parents, better then a dying world.

They all deserved better then that.

"No," Sakura said, gentle, gentle, little one, gentle. She carefully set the still-dirty dish down, and leaned back against the sink, elbows propped back against it, at a comfortably awkward angle. "No, Moegi-chan, he doesn't. But… Sasuke-kun is…"

Moegi's jaw was set. "He makes you sad."

"Sometimes."

Sakura couldn't explain; Sasuke didn't mean to make her sad. Actually, Sasuke didn't mean to do much of anything. He wanted to get away from this broken home, too.

She didn't begrudge him that.

"Just leave him alone, okay Moegi-chan? Go find Matsuri, you two can play together."

Moegi gave her one last, long, shrewd look. It sat disproportionately on her face, a look too old and too wide for someone so young. "Okay," the little girl said, finally. "I'll stop pestering 'im. But he better be nice to Kono-kun an' Udon-chan an' Hanabi-chan, 'cause if he's not, I'll kick 'im!"

Sakura watched Moegi hop off the counter-top, and bounce off to find her friends. She turned to the window, and pushed it open.

Blue sky flashed true, and Sakura wondered what Death would be like.

—

—_now_

It is a tiny coffin.

Built out of raw, fresh-cut timber, it is barely half Sakura's height, and looks like it might break with any breath of wind. It is the pale colour of unstained, young wood as it is lowered into the ground, as the sun rises bloody.

It is a tiny coffin.

The little girl inside it is—was—called Ayaka. She is—_was—_ten years old.

Twelve children dressed in black crowd around Sakura in the early morning light. They all look tired and sad, cried out after a night of coughing and screaming and sickness. But there is nothing Sakura can do to help them, not right now, anyway. Moegi clings to Sakura's hand, and cries silently into the skirt of Sakura's black dress.

It is a tiny coffin.

Ayaka had been so sick for so long.

Sakura hides her eyes and her sadness behind a curtain of elegant black lace, and thinks that _no parent should ever have to bury their child. It's not fair_.

The coffin hits the bottom of the hole in the ground, six feet deep, with a muted _thump_.

Sakura does not cry.

—

—_then_

"I'm going to law school."

Sakura looked up from the garden. Herbs; herbs were growing, leafy and small, hope in the form of seasonings. Sakura looked up at him, from underneath the brim on a floppy hat, and smiled sadly.

"I was wondering when you were going to go."

"You could come. Med school."

"I know. They'd still take me."

He stared down at her through hooded eyes, shabby and dark in a badly-patched suit-jacket (Sakura's handiwork), carrying an equally shabby and dark suitcase. "Then why—?"

Sakura continued to smile. Her eyes were as green as fresh mint, and he was slowly losing his mind. "Because I've got this place to take care of. And these people. We're a family, you know? They need me."

_But you don't need them_ hangs in the air, unspoken.

The boy who wanted perfection wanted something that Sakura couldn't give him; she couldn't drop everything and leave, the way he wanted. She didn't want to be a part of his twisted little games.

Rather, even if she wanted to, she couldn't.

She had responsibilities.

She sat back on her heels, and looked up at him.

"If it'll make you happy, you should go. You're important to me, Sasuke, but I don't need you with me, to be happy."

He stared down at her, impassive and impossible to read.

"Just… come back, eventually, okay? The kids will miss you."

They both know that that was a lie. The boy called Sasuke jerked away from Sakura and all her imperfection, and walked away. She didn't miss the hesitance in his steps.

"I'm sorry," she told the space he had previously occupied, after he had disappeared from sight. "But I can't save what's left of you."

—

—_now_

A year passes.

And then two.

And then three.

The sky flies over the ruined apartment, blue-yellow-red-purple-black, and Sakura begins to grow up. She's twenty-one, jaded beyond belief, and the mother to fourteen children, now.

She thinks of Ayaka, sometimes, buried in the ground, and misses a little girl with a big smile and even bigger dreams.

But then she just ends up missing Sasuke, and that never ends well.

—

—_then_

The boy-who-wanted-perfection didn't exist anymore.

A man who wanted someone to come home to stood outside the damaged apartment, looking up.

It had been his home, once.

He walked up crumbling concrete steps, and stood, frozen, at the door for a long minute. Fear and want warred in his mind, before he raised his hand, and knocked.

"Hold on! Hanabi-chan, can you go get it?" came through the door, a muffled murmur.

He waited.

The door opened a very thin crack. A girl peeped out, and he caught sight of dark, dark hair, and blind-looking eyes. She was small; she couldn't have been more then eight, and they blinked at each other.

"Who're you?" she asked him, curious.

"I'm—"

The door was wrenched open, and another little girl, one that he recognized, pushed the first behind her, and _glowered_ at him.

"Hello, Moegi," he said quietly.

"What do _you_ want?" she growled at him, blonde bangs falling into those dark, suspicious eyes. The other girl, younger by a year or two, peeked around the scowling blonde, and stared at him with wide, child eyes.

He thought that _Sakura had eyes like that, once, a long time ago_.

"I need to see your mother," he told them both.

"She dudn't wanna see _you_," Moegi told him, growly and protective. She forcibly kept the younger girl behind her. "Hanabi-chan, go back inside," she whispered.

"Moegi-chan, who _is_ he?" the little one asked, and he almost smiled. Hanabi, that was her name; she even _looked_ like Naruto's little girlfriend. He wondered if they were related.

"Hanabi, go inside, _now_," Moegi muttered, slipped outside, and shoved the door closed behind her. She scowled up at the tall man in front of her.

"Go 'way, Sasuke-teme. Nee-chan dudn't wanna see you."

"Moegi. I need to speak with her."

"No! She wa'n't the same, after you left. An' it wa'n't fair! She was _sad_, an' we couldn't fix her. _You_ made her like that, an'—"

The door was thrown open, again, and a woman, flannel shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbows, stood in the doorframe. "Moegi-chan, what's going on—?"

"Hello, Sakura."

"…Sasuke-kun, hello. Moegi-chan, go inside, please. Akira's crying, again."

The minute blonde threw the man named Sasuke one last evil look, and slunk back inside. Sakura closed the door softly after her.

She looked up, and smiled at him, spring and warmth and forgiveness. "So you're home."

"Yes," he said. "Yes, I'm home."

—

—_now_

They hold hands as they walk through the cemetery. The day is sunny, luxurious in warmth and a slow, almost-painful happiness, bright around the edges. The children walk silently, and it is strangely good.

"Ayaka's happy now, right? She's better, right?" someone asks.

"Yes," Sakura says. The wind carries the words away like dandelion seeds, puffy little wishes in autumn caught on the breeze.

The children say _hello, Ayaka_, and then run off to play. Sasuke kisses Sakura's fingers after they've gone, and it is one-two-three-four simple, that they're together.

Sakura and Sasuke sit by a little girl's grave, fingers twined, and watch the seasons change.

—

.

.

.

.

.

_fin_.

**notes3**: playing with tenses again & also i'm a total shopaholic.  
**notes4**: i needed to write myself a happy ending. please review if you liked it. :)


	33. scrap princess

**disclaimer**: disclaimed.  
**dedication**: to getting candy from strangers. to Breaking Benjamin. to eleni&sonya&les.  
**notes**: this actually is my relationship, right now. or lack thereof.

**title**: scrap princess  
**summary**: They're built out of the dregs of her mind, the leftover bits in a relationship that doesn't make sense. There are no chances, here, love. — Sasuke/Sakura; 33/5o.

—

.

.

.

.

.

It's a strange relationship. It's something safe that the two of them have. They sit together, in the dark, in front of her house, in his car. Not much is said

_nothing much is ever said because neither of them are good at it, and the words get stuck and they sip coffee together in the quiet_ and she looks at him out of the corner of her eye and thinks that

_you're so far away you're always so far away please come back I miss you so much it's not even funny_.

They're a lot alike, in that respect; she's no good at opening up, because she's _scared_, so _scared_, y'see? And she knows him, she _knows him, okay, I know you, I know how you are and I'm __**okay**__ with that and_ loves him, she does, even if he doesn't know it. they sit together because it's ridiculous and

_I don't want this I don't I don't I don't_.

They talk about nothing. they talk about music and being best friends and about why they're both broken and hurt and

_please forgive me, I want to love you so much, but I don't know how to let you in_.

Her thoughts run and run and run, looping back in on themselves even as she tries to rationalize this _thing_ they do. Because it is a _thing_, it's a _thing_ where they sabotage and break and hate and love and _will you stop texting me please, it gives me hope in a world where there is none_.

She doesn't say anything, and it's all in the music, droplets of golden ecstasy dripping through her soul as she tries, tries, _tries_ to be this paradigm of perfection, silly and smiley and happy, but it's all for him, _for him_, and sometimes she thinks that no one else sees that _because no one sees no one ever sees_ and it's like an addiction; the more she feeds it, the more she needs it.

And it's not until she's shaking in her bed, shake shake shaking like a leaf in the wind that she realizes that she wants

_someone to notice, that's all I want, please notice, please, because you're the only one who notices things like that and there are a lot of things like that,_ things that she can't have.

Maybe she's a coward and maybe she's crazy, but that's okay. They sit together, for a while, you know, in that dark and quiet place. They sit and they listen and they pretend that this is maybe something that fits, something that is _them_.

No one else understands.

She looks at him in the orange light of a streetlamp, and he's blurred in a way, smeared and grimy behind a shatterglass window of society's favourite thing, lies. But he's beautiful, so beautiful, and she wants to touch him, touch his hair, touch his cheek, touch his chest. He's kind of transient, there but not, beautiful in his awkwardness.

"I love you," she says, and just like that, the world tilts on its axis.

He just looks at her. They sit in the car, and they look at each other; she holds her breath, because she's _scared, so scared, y'see_ not ready for this and

he takes her hand, fingertips warm from the coffee, and just holds it.

They don't look at each other. They can't. He doesn't say anything and she doesn't say anything, and they sit and sit and sit and sit until the sun comes up and she's asleep against his shoulder and _when did that happen, you ridiculous girl_ because

she's not special, she's not. He shakes her gently, and she opens her eyes, and blinks-stares at him, and he shrugs. They're stuck, they are, stuck in time and stuck in all the things they should and shouldn't be.

Because she's a girl and he's a boy, and sometimes she thinks he's getting better at making her crazy. She doesn't know how to tell him that.

She kisses him.

And that is how it goes.

—

_iloveyouiloveyouiloveyou_ the words ring in his head until he's going mad from it all. But he understands, he does. He doesn't say _yes_ or _no_ or _anything at all_. He stares at her, and pretends that this might end different then how it always ends

_we're all mad here_ grins the Cheshire Cat, and it's all about the lack of grammar and streetlamp light and nothing makes sense, it doesn't make sense _it doesn't make sense_ and

he thinks it's because there are no expectations. Probably. Something like that.

The days go a lot like this:

wake up. get up. stand up. dress up. sit up. shut up. goof up. eat up.

"How was your day?"

"Looking up."

—

They meet like this:

It's all Naruto's fault, really.

Really.

_I'm not sure what you're looking for_,

she says, without pretence and without shame. She doesn't know, really, she doesn't, and she stand behind the counter of the curio shop and stares at him. He just shrugs, and mutters

_I don't know. My—friend pushed me in here_.

She blinks at him.

_One of those, huh_?

she asks, and he just nods.

_Well… you can look around, if you want. I know, it's the middle of nowhere, but sometimes, you find the most interesting things in the weirdest places_,

and she smiles at him, all sharp edges and bright sparks, and he wonders just who on earth she is.

—

The separation is painful.

The first one, that is.

It's a lot like walking on eggshells around each other. Sakura doesn't know what to say. She stands next to a door, her hand on the knob, and

_I'm sorry, did you know that? I really, really am sorry, about this_.

But no one does anything, and so they stand on opposite sides of the room, and recoil, recoil, recoil. Nothing will make this right.

But.

She's starting to think she's going crazy.

Because when Naruto's laughing and laughing, and Ino's smirking, and Kakashi's doing that eye-crinkle thing—all that Sakura hear is them _screaming_. There's blood everywhere, and _I'm losing it, Naruto, I __**swear**__ I'm losing it_—.

And then she's back in an empty room, and she's all alone, and

_where am I, again_?

The sickness coats the inside of her lungs like mucus, thick and pasty. It's in her throat, in her throat, in her lungs, in her lungs, and she can't—can't breathe. Can't _breathe_.

She feels like she's chasing the sun, breaking through irony, and then it's Sasuke,

_sasukesasukesasuke_

like nothing she ever did mattered, in the first place. They sit on his bed, shattered eggshells and picture frames around them, glittering like shards of diamonds or broken dreams, and he plays a guitar that has her name scrawled on the back in black ink.

It shouldn't work.

It _shouldn't_.

But it does.

She can't breathe, but it works.

They sit on his bed like they sit in his car,

_it's always his; __**his**__ world, __**his**__ friends, the love of __**his**__ life. She's just… disposable, like a dirty rag,_

hands close together, pinkies almost touching, and Sakura's head is down, down, down, pink hair a thick wall between their eyes, because she can't—won't—look him in the eyes.

_He's beautiful_, Sakura thinks, _and I'm just disposable_.

—

So the days go like this:

It's all in reverse. Go to bed at five AM, wake up at as the sun starts to sink the sky, and the world is stained red. Find a pair of grimy jeans on the floor, pull a plaid shirt on—it's lace in the back, all lace, all black, and it doesn't make sense—and then she's running out the door, bag thumping against her side.

The city's underground is only starting to come alive, and Sakura runs because she has no other choice. No one shoots three times and misses, not unless they're not trying, and so

_sorry sasuke, i have to go, because even though iloveyou, this isn't going to work out_.  
—_sakura_

at least, that's what the note says.

—

He finds her sitting on a beach, wearing cutoffs, with her knees up to her chest, and her bag at her side. She stares out at the ocean, the morning sun on her face. Her eyes are squinty from the glare off the water, gold light blending her usually-pale skin dark.

Sasuke sits down next to her, thinks of contrast and paradigms of perfection and the way she always seems to stick out, her and her _Sakura_ness.

"I love you, too," he says, and

_that's the only thing I even wanted to hear from you_, she thinks, and closes her eyes.

The sun rises, and this is how it ends.

—

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_fin_.

**notes2**: wow, this actually makes less then no sense. but i… really… like it…  
**notes3**: ACK, NANO STARTS IN… FIFTEEN MINUTES. WISH ME LUCK!


	34. lock up the sun

**disclaimer**: disclaimed.  
**dedication**: to both sonya & les. happy birthday[s], babies. :)  
**notes**: written on a paper napkin. i'm not even kidding.

**title**: lock up the sun  
**summary**: Sometimes it just takes a while. — Sasuke/Sakura; 34/5o.

—

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She sat by the window in the empty Vietnamese restaurant, and watched the steam rise from her tea. She silently hoped she had enough money in her bank account to afford this—it would be awful to not be able to afford a bowl of noodles.

_Wouldn't be the first time, though_, she thought, rueful.

Snow was falling outside. It was the first big snowfall of the year, and the roads were a mess. If it was Christmas, it would be nice. But it wasn't. Christmas was a month away, and instead, the snow was just a relentless machine that seemed to like invading Sakura's personal space. The city-that-grew-too-quickly was suddenly frozen, left in hurried stasis as the work crews left the premises.

People rushed past the window, bundled up in dark-coloured scarves and coats.

Sakura always wondered about that—about how, in winter, it suddenly became like colour was forbidden. It was sad, really.

She was wearing The Harvard Sweatshirt, again.

Sakura didn't know who left it in her apartment, but it was warm and it cut the cold, and it gave her hope that maybe one day she'd manage to make it there, manage to turn a dream into reality. The med student tossed her hair over her shoulder.

So cold, it was so cold, out there.

But the awful music that was blaring from the speakers in the restaurant was giving her a headache, and her noodles had arrived.

Sakura quietly drank her tea.

—

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.

.

School was boring. Business was boring. Everything was _boring_.

Sasuke leaned his elbow on the counter, and counted down the days 'til break.

Pink-girl looked like summer, a blaze of light and heat, life incarnate, dancing in a vinyl shop with headphones on. She was summer's mould, chilled but not beginning to die, even as autumn faded into the depths of winter.

She breezed in and out of the library three or four times a day, barely there, feet skimming the floor.

She smiled at him, sometimes.

Sasuke didn't even know her name.

It was Tuesday.

Pink-girl was standing in the stacks, right at the back, with her eyes closed. She was swaying from side to side, clutching the slip to a beat-up Eagles vinyl.

"Livin' it up in da hotel California…" she sang, soft, dust rising from the stacks.

Sasuke brushed past her.

Her hair was cut ragged, the tips catching the sunlight slanting through the window. They danced in the corner of his vision, out of place and out of line, and something in Sasuke twitched.

Unruly.

Sasuke snorted.

He walked away from her, and slipped into the back.

Pink-girl.

_Annoying_.

—

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Sakura was sitting on the front steps of the library, flicking through the pages of the book on her lap. It was a thick book—textbook, worth more then her entire outfit today combined—pristine and mostly not scribbled on. Sakura stared at the pages without seeing, looked without reading, _flick-flick-flick_, too tired to really comprehend.

She listened to the sound of cars zooming back and forth across the street, slush under winter tires grating against her subconscious.

The sound of footsteps had Sakura looking up. "Oh. Hi."

"Hn."

He walked right past her.

And didn't even _look_ at her.

…

Well, _that_ was rude.

Sakura slammed the textbook closed, stuffed it into the satchel that was hanging off her shoulder, and stood up.

It took her half a second to catch up to him (okay, so she still didn't know his name; whatever).

"I _said_ 'hello'. Usually, people only greet someone else when they're trying to start a conversation, you know."

He looked at her through dark hair and darker eyes, and Sakura tilted her head at him.

"I'm Sakura," she said, and stuck out her hand.

He just stared at her.

"You're supposed to tell me your name, stupid."

"…"

"If you don't, I'm going to start calling you something rude."

He looked annoyed. Sakura felt smug.

"Sasuke," he said, at last. "I'm Sasuke."

"Well then, Sasuke," she said with a grin, "it's nice to make your acquaintance."

She walked past him, then, and called at him over her shoulder. She was smearing into the crowded street. Her voice rang in his ears. "Now you can actually say _hi_, instead of just watching me like a stalker or something."

The smile on her lips stayed stuck in his head for the next five days.

(Or, at least, she hoped it did.)

—

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.

University was a lot like high school, Sasuke thought.

Only with better parties.

Better people, too.

"You're drinking?"

"Galaxy water."

Blink, blink. "Hn."

She waved the bottle in his face. "See, _look_, it's _galaxy water_."

"Sakura, that's rum."

"_Galaxy_ water, Sasuke."

Sigh. Shuffle. "Give that here."

Pout. "No."

"Sakura."

"_No_, Sasuke. Mine."

Sigh. Thud.

"…You're touching me. You're _sitting_ next to _me_."

"Yes, Sakura, I am."

"…You're kinda weird, Sasuke, did you know?"

"Hn."

"Here."

Shh-shh-shh of liquid sloshing in a bottle. "Hn?"

"You wanted some, right? Here."

Flare of heat when he felt her fingers wrapped around the neck of the bottle.

The world hung around, quiet.

"Sakura…"

"If you're going to kiss me, just do it, please."

And so he did.

—

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.

It was a strange experience.

It was sex without strings, kissing without any of the actual emotional attachment, physical comfort when everything else was falling apart—school, home, Real Life. It was touch and heat and lust. It was fire, burning and charring and destroying all sanity. That was what it was.

Sakura had never been that sort of girl.

She was pretty sure that Sasuke wasn't that sort of guy, either.

So it didn't really make sense.

He pressed her against the wall, bruising and almost-violent.

Sakura didn't mind.

She tipped her head back, his mouth on her pulse, and Sakura let out a strangled whimper. "Do you even—?"

"Sakura," he muttered, "shut _up_."

—

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"I got a date," she said with a smile, picking up a pale blue shirt and slipping it over her head.

Late afternoon sunlight poured in through the dorm's closed windows. The rest of the world was shut out, and Sakura and Sasuke were left to their own little bit of hell—each other, and the mess around them.

He was just laying on the bed, naked but for a sheet across his lower half. He watched her fumble with the buttons, fingers slow, uncoordinated, a little off-kilter, still shaking from too much caffeine, too much passion, too much want, too much, _too much_.

He raised a dark eyebrow and said nothing.

Sakura bent down over him, and pressed her lips to his cheek.

She lingered for a split-second too long, skin against skin, and they both stayed frozen.

Sasuke almost had time to pull her down to the bed, again, hide her away from the rest of the world; almost had time, almost had the nerve.

But then she pulled away.

She waggled her fingers at him, eyes green and mischievous, and said "I'll see you later, okay?"

Sasuke ignored the swirling in his stomach as the door closed behind her. He couldn't hear her heels clicking against the floor; she was being quiet.

He wondered how long this was going to go on.

He wondered if he was going to last that long.

The darkly ignored swirling in his stomach told him not to hope for too much, because it likely wasn't going to happen.

And that was never a good thing.

—

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.

She collapsed on the couch next to him, nose red with cold. She'd blown in the door, a wintry breeze chasing her heels. "Ew, I hate beer," she announced.

Sasuke raised both an eyebrow and a bottle of the aforementioned alcohol. "S'not so bad."

Sakura shook her head, strands of hair in her mouth. "It's gross."

"Sakura, you drink rum straight out of the bottle."

"_Galaxy_ water, Sasuke," Sakura corrected with a sigh.

"Hn."

She sat there next to him, boneless, distorted and graceless, but only for a minute. She raised a hand up and rubbed at her nose, frowning. "It's goddamn cold out there. …Hey, Sasuke…"

Sasuke didn't like her tone. "Hn?"

She curled into his side, fingers seeking the warmth of his skin. She pressed her still-red nose into the hollow of his throat, shivering like a leaf. "You're warm," she mumbled, practically on his lap.

Sasuke looked skyward to stop himself from doing something rash.

Sakura climbed the rest of the way into his lap, and arranged herself into a small ball of soft, girly-smelling flesh.

And her hair was in his nose.

…

Annoying girl.

"Hey, Sasuke?"

"Hn?"

"This is… nice."

"Hn," he replied, and slipped his arms around her. She dropped her head back, half-asleep against his collar bone. She was warm and alive and real and _Sakura_.

There, in that moment, Sasuke first discovered the inkling of absolute complete possessiveness about the girl trapped within the circle of his arms.

Nothing changed.

The world did not stop spinning on its axis. Time did not freeze.

Nothing changed, except for the fierce rush of affection that ran through Sasuke's body, directed at the almost-slumbering girl called Sakura.

—

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After they fuck, she leaves.

Every single time.

It didn't matter how late at night it was; it didn't matter whether Sasuke lay atop her body, breathing in the scent of her perfume, the taste of her sweat on his tongue; it didn't matter if he had an exam next day; it didn't _matter_.

Because she always left.

Always.

Sometimes Sasuke wondered why she didn't stay.

But then he remembered that it was a sex-only arrangement.

So he didn't say anything, fingers stroking down to the base of her spine, the knobs of her vertebrae protruding sharply, wrapped in warm skin and flexed muscle.

He counted them in twos; two, four, six, eight, ten.

He kissed every one.

Sakura shivered, and twisted around to press her mouth to his, hungry and wanting.

The earth crashed into the sky.

It made him wonder.

—

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.

She was standing in front of him, twisting the hem of her shirt, biting her lip, nails dug into her palms.

It was classic nervous-Sakura behaviour at twoAM on a Saturday night.

(Sasuke didn't stop to consider that, even only after knowing her for three-and-a-half months, he knew Sakura's behavioural patterns like the back of his hand. He just did. Knew, that is. He knew Sakura.)

She stood in front of him, kicking the dirt and looking guilty.

"I can't _do_ this anymore,"

she said.

She wouldn't even look him in the eye.

Sasuke's (existent) heart stuttered in his chest.

He watched her walk away.

Nothing but silence.

—

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The silence lasted only a day and a half.

Sasuke caught her wrist as she was leaving her last Sociology lecture, fingers clamping around her wrist, tight-too-tight, and headed to the nearest secluded place he could find—which happened to be a recently-emptied classroom.

He dragged her inside the classroom, shoved the door closed, and turned to look at her.

"Uh, Sasuke—?" she started to ask.

He didn't even say anything. He picked her up and carried her across the room, to set her down on top of a desk.

"What was that, Sakura?"

He could count the freckles that dusted her nose. He could count her breaths. He could count her eyelashes, if he tried.

"What was what?"

"You know what."

"No, I do—oh. You mean—"

"_Yes_, Sakura. _That_."

She looked up at him, gaze tired. "I can't do the sex-without-strings thing anymore, Sasuke."

"Why not?"

He'd rather have claim on some little piece of her than nothing at all.

Sakura glared up at him, apparently affronted. "Because I'm not—I'm not like that, okay? It's not me!"

"Then what _is_ you?" Sasuke asked.

He moved closer.

He could count the shades of green in her eyes.

"I'm—I'm not whoever you think I am."

Sasuke's upper body curved over Sakura's. His face was shadowed, and he could hear her heart. Could count the beats.

"Hn."

Sakura's back hit the desk with a muted _thud_.

She looked up at him for a moment.

"If you're going to kiss me, just do it, please."

And so he did.

—

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_(maybe) tbc_.  
**notes2**: les & i can have entire, deep conversations in random noises & smilies. it's pretty great. :D  
**notes3**: HAPPY HOLIDAYS, EVERYONE. er. yeah. review, please. :)


	35. the ballad of miss nothing

**disclaimer**: disclaimed.  
**dedication**: to my mother for letting me have mental health days. thanks mum :) also to sonya and les and emily and eleni for being my posse, yo.  
**notes**: hahahahahaha. hahaaa. ha. it's been two months. goddamn. well, i guess i'm back. sort of. on Valentine's Day, of all things. god.

**title**: the ballad of miss nothing  
**summary**: And you—you are so stupid, you don't even get it—why don't you get it, huh? I mean, you should. It's not like it's complicated. — 35/5o.

—

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**two**.

The first conscious knowledge Haruno Sakura had of Uchiha Sasuke was… kind of strange.

_Movement like breathing. Eyes half closed. Something vaguely hard underneath her body. Creamy-gold light on her cheeks. Warmth, lucidity._

_And then darkness._

_A hollow voice spoke, smiling and echo-ey "This is Sasuke-kun. Say 'hi' to Sakura!"_

_A face over hers, dark hair, dark eyes. It was frowning down at her. Her face wrinkled up, a wail bubbling up to tear at her throat._

_Laughter over her screaming. "I don't think she likes you very much, Sasuke-kun!"_

Thinking on it always made her frustrated.

Stupid Sasuke.

—

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.

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**four**.

"This is Karin. Amuse yourselves."

Sasuke wasn't the greatest babysitter, Sakura had noticed. He pushed the other redheaded girl forward, and then he turned and left.

The two girls looked at each other for a moment, surveying each other in that way that little girls do when they are unsure of whether or not they'll be able to be friends. Sakura already had one friend—Ino—and she wasn't really sure if she could handle another one. Ino was kind of a handful, like that.

Karin looked at her for another moment, red eyes staring squintily from behind black horn-rimmed glasses. Sakura tried a weak half-smile. Karin squinted for another second before sticking out a fist. Sakura blinked as the little fist unclenched, to reveal a watermelon ring pop.

"Friends?"

How could Sakura _not_ be friends with a girl who offered her a watermelon ring pop?

It was unheard of.

Sakura smiled, little-girl teeth breaking out into a genuine smile. "Friends."

And thus the two-headed monster known as KarinandSakuraaaaaaaa (which would quickly become the four-headed monster ) was born.

Sasuke never forgave himself for this grave injustice to the world.

—

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**seven**.

"You're icky," Sakura said to her older brother, face scrunched up.

Naruto looked heartbroken. "Teme, look at her! My own _sister_ thinks I'm icky!"

"That's because you _are_," Sasuke replied. His left eye was twitching. Sakura had the distinct impression that he was not amused by her older brother.

This thought made her seven-year-old mind very happy. Anyone who disliked her brother was probably a very rational person.

"Sasukeeeeeee. Mama says you need to come _in_, now! She sounds _mad_!" cackled a voice, and all three children looked around to see Sasuke's younger—and only—sister skipping down the street, crimson hair swinging wildly behind her.

"What did she want, Karin?"

"Dunno!" Karin chirped, tossing her hair back and grinning widely. "She didn't sound too happy, though. I think you should go talk to her, 'fore she does something that might hurt'cha. Oh-hi, Sakura!"

Sasuke did not look impressed.

Sakura grinned, and waved at the other girl.

And Karin, being Karin, did what she did best; she threw herself on Sakura, and hugged the life out of her. "Want to go to the park? They got a new set of swings!"

Sakura smiled into her friend's shoulder. "Sure."

Karin looked over at her brother and his best friend. "Don't worry, Naru-chan. I'll take care of Sakura, I promise!"

Naruto looked a little bit green. "That's what I'm afraid of."

Karin and Sakura, too-skinny arms still wrapped around each other, grinned identical evil grins.

Naruto paled further.

As the two girls skipped off, Naruto shook his head with all the knowledge and grace an eleven-year-old could muster. "They're gonna be the death of us, Teme."

Sasuke was silent as he watched them go. Half-way down the block, they were singing a song about rain. He watched them for another moment, before deciding he was very inclined to agree.

—

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**ten**.

"I don't want to do this," Sakura said nervously.

They were standing in front of a ferris-wheel. It was Tanabata—early August, and so, so, so hot. Sakura could feel sweat tricking down her back. It wasn't a pleasant feeling.

And now, looking up at the gigantic ferris-wheel, Sakura wasn't so sure that she wanted to stay. Home had air conditioning and TV. The festival had junk food and pseudo-freedom in the form and Sasuke and Karin and Naruto and Ino. It was a fairly even battle.

And then the festival brought out the ferris-wheels, and Sakura was beyond to throw her hands up and shout "YOU WIN, WORLD, I'M GOING NOW."

She had a thing about heights, okay?

"C'mon," Sasuke said.

"No—um, I think I'll just wait here. I, uh, I don't—"

"I know you don't like heights. Come on."

"I'll never forgive you for this. Never," Sakura told him. She tucked her hands into her pockets to stop them from shaking.

"Hn," Sasuke said, and practically forced her in line.

The man who was working the ride raised an eyebrow. "Yeh okay, lassie?"

"She's fine," Sasuke replied before Sakura could get a word out.

"I wasn't askin' _yeh_," the man said, and looked back at Sakura. "I _said_, 'yeh okay, lassie?' an' I was askin' the lass, not yeh. Yeh don' much look like a lass, lest my eyes deceive me."

Sasuke looked affronted, but Sakura smiled weakly. "M'okay. Just… not too fast, okay?"

"Aye," he said, and gestured towards the seat. "Remember t'bring the bar down, luv. You'll be a'right."

Sakura gulped, nodded, and clambered onto the bench. It swung a little as Sasuke sat down next to her, and brought the restraining bar down. Sakura clenched her teeth.

Sasuke looked down at her the top of her head. She didn't seem very happy with this situation. He rolled his eyes, and offered her his arm. "Don't cut my circulation off."

"If I fall, I'm taking you with me," she grumbled and latched onto his arm, just as they began to move.

Sasuke sighed and sat back.

They went around once without stopping, which was okay except for when seat swung, which was _not_ okay. The second time around, they'd just crested the top, and were two carts down when the thing screeched to a stop.

Sakura went white, and clutched Sasuke's arm with all the conviction she could find. "O-ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod…"

"Sakura, calm down, and look up," Sasuke said gently.

"I hate you. I really, really, _really_ hate you."

"Sakura."

She finally looked up and out. Far above the ground, it was cooler. Away from the people and the heat and the excitement, Sakura felt something like calm for the first time that night. And even though the sun had gone down long ago—there was only a glow far to the west to remind that there was a sun at all—there was something serene and calm about the late evening that had Sakura almost smiling.

She didn't look down, though, because she knew that if she did, she would be sick.

So instead, she looked out and around. "Hey, Sasuke."

"Hn?"

"Thanks," she said. "For this."

"Hn."

It was almost a reply, and so Sakura smiled, and stared at that golden line, far away on the horizon.

—

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**twelve**.

"Why are you here? Naruto said he'd come pick me up after school," Sakura said, pushing long pink hair out of her face as she scrambled into Sasuke's "brand-fucking-new" truck. It was high off the ground, and it took two tries before she managed to get her foot up.

Sasuke shook his head darkly. "I'm going to kill that idiot."

Sakura shook her head. "I have first dibs. I said that a long time ago. That still doesn't answer my question—where's my brother?"

"With that girl."

"Hinata? Has he convinced her to date him yet?"

"Dunno. Don't care. I have to take you home."

"I'm not a _child_, Sasuke! You can _tell_ me! This is my _brother_ we're talking about, and knowing him, he's going to screw it up! Hinata's _nice_!"

He snorted, and Sakura glared at him with all the might of her twelve-almost-thirteen years. "Whatever you say, shorty."

"Don't _call_ me that. I'm not a _kid_."

Sasuke didn't bother to contradict her. She was just as bad as his sister—worse, even, because at least Karin respected him (sort of. Maybe? Yeah, maybe).

Sakura was always so _annoying_.

And she was still talking.

"—and how is Karin, anyway? Is she still sick? Can I go see her?"

"She's better."

"Does that mean you'll take me to see her?" Sakura asked, jerking her head up, lips parting over her teeth.

"Hn."

"Awwwww, see, Sasuke! This is why you're my favourite!" Sakura laughed, and reached over to hug his arm.

Sasuke raised his eyes skyward. _Fuck's sakes, she's twelve. And she's your best friend's sister. And she's __**twelve**_.

Sakura, oblivious, continued to grin. "Go on, then! Let's go! I have a sick friend to attack, duh!"

—

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**fourteen**.

"You are—you are _impossible_," she snarled at him. Storm faced, hurricane hair, ripped tights; Sakura stood in front of Sasuke, a wild-child with anger-dark green eyes, fourteen and not even close to knowing what she was doing.

"Hn."

She hated that he was always so mild. "What are you even _doing_ here, Sasuke?"

"Your mother sent me."

Sakura glowered at him, lips painted red and bruised—just kissed, scorch-marks of heat across her face. The taste of someone else's cigarette rolled across her taste buds, acrid, cancer-inducing poison. She smiled in a nasty way, vodka and venom at the tip of her tongue. "Sure she did."

"Hn."

"What did you expect? That you'd crash my date and I'd _thank_ you? Who do you think you _are_?"

He stayed silent, but really, what did she expect? He'd always been like that. Always been stupid and silent and—

"Get in the car, Sakura."

Or not.

_Stupid_ Sasuke.

"_Make_ me," she hissed at him. It wasn't a smart move—he was taller and stronger and bigger than she was, and he had four years and many inches on her, but it didn't matter. Because she would not—could not—let this go.

"Hn."

"Ack—what are you doing—GET OFF OF ME!"

"No."

Ten minutes and much screeching later, Sakura sat in the front seat of Sasuke's truck, fuming. "I _hate_ you."

"Buckle yourself in, we're going."

"No. I hate you. I really, really, _really_ hate you. Like, _really_."

"Hn."

"Who are you to tell me who I can and can't date? It's not like you're my _brother_ or something!"

"That's Naruto's job."

"Which he sucks at. But it's still not your business! I know that my mother wouldn't have told you to come _get_ me, because I'm not some little _kid_, and because if she would have sent anyone, she would have sent _Naruto_ because he's Naruto and _he's my brother_ and _you're not_. And anyway, Dad already threatened Shino's nuts if I wasn't home by eleven, which, by the way, was seriously rude."

"It's late."

"It's NINE-TWENTY-EIGHT," she screeched, and watched him grit his teeth with deep satisfaction. "I can keep talking all night, you know—you ruin my night, I ruin yours. I can talk for hours and hours and hours and _you can't stop me_."

"I can tell your father that I walked in on you underneath your date." The _you ruin my night, I ruin your life_ hung between them, unspoken.

Sakura's eye twitched. "But—you—I WASN'T."

As angry as she was, she couldn't help holding her breath when he reached across her to fiddle with the sound. _Breathe, just breathe, it's Sasuke, just breathe_, she told herself.

"He doesn't know that," Sasuke replied evenly as he rolled down the window—heavy bass pounded in the interior of the truck and filtered out.

Never mind. Breathing was overrated. Sakura had a small seizure with the sudden onset of complete outrage, and she shrieked at him over the pounding bass.

"_WHY DON'T YOU JUST __**DROP DEAD**_?"

—

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**sixteen**.

"Are you _crazy_?" Sakura asked, mouth gaping wide.

Karin smiled over the rim of her coffee cup. "Of course I am."

They always had conversations like these in Karin's kitchen. It was always after school, when no adults were home. They—they being Sakura and Karin and sometimes Ino and sometimes Tenten—would ditch their books at the front door, and head to the kitchen to drink expensive, alcoholic coffee and gossip, as girls were wont to do. It was a ritual that was never, ever broken. Ever.

_Ever_.

This day, it was Karin and Sakura and the last of a bottle of Bailey's.

"You are _fucking_ your brother's _best friend_."

"_Second_-best friend. Your brother is still my brother's best friend, as much as Sasuke denies it."

"You are fucking _Hozuki Suigetsu_."

"Yes, that's what I said."

Sakura didn't even have _words_. She was too busy being shocked and marginally disgusted, because one, um, _ew_. And two, um, _ew_. "Are you _trying_ to get him _killed_? When Sasuke finds out—"

"If," Karin interrupted. "_If_ he finds out. Which he won't. I've taken the necessary precautions. I know I'm doing. I mean, I've been fucking people since I was, like, fifteen, or something."

Sakura levelled a dark glare in her best friend's direction. "Fourteen, and ever since, I've had to listen to _all the gory details_."

"Oh, please, like you didn't like it," Karin smirked, so very reminiscent of Sasuke that Sakura almost choked.

It wasn't her fault—she saw him almost everyday. He practically _lived_ in her basement. It _wasn't her fault_.

Seriously.

"You are still _fucking his best friend_!" Sakura squeaked.

"He can't talk. He wants to fuck you, and you're _my_ best friend," Karin replied, breezy.

Sakura choked and spewed mocha everywhere. Karin looked faintly disgusted—flecks of Sakura-spewed mocha had landed on her eyelid. Why did it _always_ have to land on the eyelid? _Even_ when one was wearing a pair of glasses? Urgh— and pushed her glasses up her nose. "You're acting like this a shock or something."

"Um, that's because it _is_!" Sakura managed to get out before she went back to choking on her own spit.

"Please, naivety doesn't suit you. _Everyone_ knows he wants to fuck you. He's wanted to fuck you for _ages_. And everyone knows! Except maybe your brother. He's, um…"

"Stupid, that's the word you're looking for."

"Yeah, that. Anyway. Everyone and their _mother_ knows that Sasuke wants to fuck you, excusing your brother."

Sakura was turning a very unflattering shade of purple. Karin did nothing to remedy this.

"AKJFHASLKJ."

"Don't tell me you actually didn't know. _Everyone knows_, Sakura!"

"_Not _me! _I_ didn't know!"

Karin flipped her hair over her shoulder. "Well, now you do. Don't worry about it, this is _Sasuke_ we're talking about, he probably thinks you think he doesn't exist. Even tho' we all know you want his babies."

The unflattering shade of purple deepened as Sakura continued to choke.

And that was the end of that.

Only not really, because for next the two weeks, Sakura couldn't look Sasuke in the face without turning a very ungainly shade of puce.

Sasuke had no idea what was going on.

Like it made any difference, because she still choked and he was still Sasuke and okay, she still kind of wanted to have his babies.

There _had_ to be something wrong with her.

There just _had_ to be.

—

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**eighteen**.

"Last day, huh," Sakura said, stretching.

"Something like that," Karin replied.

The lazy lull of summer called just outside the window. Sakura rested her head on crossed arms. "We could be out there, you know."

"And instead, we're sitting, through the last class of AP Math _ever_."

It wasn't really a hardship. The whole senior class was in the middle of a day-long party, and no one was sober enough to stop them. They'd been _That_ _Year_; the awful year—the grade as a whole that even the teachers were afraid of.

To have them all leaving was a relief for everyone not in the year, Sakura was sure.

"What are you doing after class?" Sakura asked.

"Who, Sakura. _Who_ am I doing after class. Suigetsu? Kiba? Your brother? I dunno."

"You are such a slut."

"Yeaaah," Karin said with a smile. "But at least it's for a good cause."

"What? You getting around? How is that a good cause?"

"'Course it's not! My vagina is not for sale. No, the good cause is you and Sasuke finally getting over your issues and banging the life out of each other. You can't do that shit if _I'm _there, because that would just be way _beyond_ awkward. _Duh_."

"KASEJHFAEKSFJH."

"You know," Karin told her earnestly, "you should really stop choking. It can't be good for your health."

"I _hate_ you. I hate your whole _family_."

"Sakura, you can't hate my mom. That's, like, _impossible_. My mom is too cute," Karin replied, shaking her head emphatically.

"I just—I _hate_ you!"

"That's nice. Bell's about to ring. Sasuke should be here to pick me up… Just… I dunno, get in the truck, and jump his bones. He'll forget all about me. If you don't have the tits to jump him in broad daylight, then tell him I'm at the beach. Something. Anything. Just get him to take you home, drag him into your house, and _tongue him_."

Sakura was disgusted.

Actually.

Completely grossed out. Too grossed-out to retaliate as the bell rang, Sakura watched as Karin gathered her books, gave Sakura a pair of thumbs up and a half-smile, and booked it the heck out of there.

Sakura sighed as she shoved her books into her bag. "Bye, Asuma-sensei. I'd say 'see you next year', but, hah, well, I won't."

Her AP math teacher had already lit a cigarette. He nodded at her as she left.

Sakura walked down the hall, past her empty locker—it was open. The inside was still scribbled all over in Ino's loopy handwriting in vicious purple and Tenten's chicken-scratch in blue, her own soon-to-be-doctor's scrawl in fushia and Karin's precisely clipped printing in scarlet. Huh, highschool.

Sakura was one of the last to slip outside.

And there was Sasuke's truck. The window was rolled down by the time she made it down there.

"She's already gone," Sakura said as way of explanation. "Can I catch a ride?"

"Hn," he acquiesced, and Sakura walked around to the other side, to climb in. She waved to a couple of girls and shook off the catcalls with a smile.

This was just _Sasuke_.

And, okay, he was beautiful. And she was kind of in love with him. Okay, she got it.

Really, she did.

But she was going away after the summer, and he was going back to business school half-way across the country and Sakura _didn't know _if she was strong enough for this.

She trained her gaze on her lap, and spoke. "What am I to you?"

"Hn?"

Sakura could feel him staring at her. "Nothing. Never mind."

—

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—

**nineteen**.

She was headed home for Reading Break—ten days where she would do nothing except laze around the house and eat cookie dough with Karin and Ino. Ten days where she would do _nothing_ that required brainpower. Ten days where she would sleep in late, stay out even later, and do _nothing_ that was considered respectable.

The thought of it was absolute bliss, and Sakura couldn't wait.

Sakura smiled into the cold, her nose red and running. It was freezing, and she didn't care. Getting off the plane, heading through the gates, and finally, _finally_ home was the most amazing thing _ever_.

"You _bitch_! Where have you _been_?" came a shriek, and Sakura found herself engulfed in four arms and the bodies of her two best friends.

"School, stupid. Holy crap on crackers, you're _tan_!"

Ino flashed a smile, very white against her newly-tan skin. "The Bahamas are the place to go, okay? The _place_ to _go_."

"I'm sure they are," Sakura giggled, and glances over her friends' heads. She could see Naruto, waving wildly.

Sasuke was standing just behind him, looking annoyed.

She sighed.

They really, really needed to talk.

She smiled at him in a weak sort of way as they walked her out. He touched her hand, and it was almost an apology.

But only almost, and they still really, really, _really_ needed to talk.

—

Of course, the chance to talk didn't come until the next day, when Sakura had unpacked and was lounging around the living room in flannel pajama pants and a tank top. She was planning to spend the day watching through six weeks of _Gossip Girl_, _Pretty Little Liars_, and _Jersey Shore_.

(Really, everyone needed a good dose of trashy TV now and then.)

But the doorbell rang, and Sakura lazily pulled herself up off the couch to go get it. She ambled to the door, and pulled it open. "Hello?"

"Hn."

"Oh. Um. Hi, Sasuke. Come in, Naruto's not going to be home for a bit, I think."

"No, look, Sakura. We…"

"Need to talk. I know. That's why I said Naruto wouldn't be back for a while. He's at Hinata's, I think. Now are you going to come in, or are you just going to stand there like an idiot? It's cold."

And in he went.

Sakura turned and faced him. She was wearing a pair of reading glasses, hair up and out of her way, and Sasuke thought that—that he liked her best like this, when she was just Sakura, with no varnish and nothing to make some perfect-plastic doll-girl. She was just Sakura, and he liked her like that.

"Hn."

"If that's you asking why I kissed you before I got that plane to leave, I'm not telling you anything. You had better get a bigger vocabulary, because until you do, I'm not telling you _jack_-shit."

Sasuke sighed, and just stared at her. Yes, that was what he wanted to know, and _yes_, he knew that she knew that he couldn't really find the right words. He'd never been good at words—never been good at Sakura, really.

And now she was standing in front of him with her fingers twisted into the hem of her shirt, looking like she was about to kill someone.

There was something very attractive about it.

(How fucked up was this relationship, again?)

Sakura stood there, and shook her head slowly. "This is—you know, I don't even have words for you. I really don't. And you—you are so stupid, you don't even get it—why don't you get it, huh? I mean, you should. It's not like it's complicated."

She was talking with her hands, waving them around as she spoke, because she couldn't really explain the frustration.

She _kissed_ him before she'd left. She'd grabbed his face, stood on her tiptoes, and pressed their lips together, hoping that maybe—_just maybe_—he would reciprocate.

But he hadn't.

_Stupid_ Sasuke.

He caught her wrists, and Sakura thought for a second about how big his hands were. He still had four years and several inches on her. _Fucking stupid Sasuke_.

"Sakura," he said quietly. "I get it. I do."

"No, you don't. If you got it, you wouldn't be here, because you being here is torture and I _can't fucking take this_, because it _hurts_ and I hope you know that if your sister wasn't one of my best friends, I would fucking _ruin_ you—"

"You _talk_ too much," Sasuke muttered, and pulled her closer.

"—and I _really hate you_, okay?"

"Hn," he said. "Sakura, look up."

She tipped her head upwards, another verbal lashing on the tip of her tongue.

And then her lips were very much occupied.

And they stayed occupied for the next ten minutes.

When Sasuke finally pulled back, there was a fine glaze on Sakura's eyes, and her cheeks were flushed.

"I told you," he said quietly. "I get it."

"Oh," she murmured. "Well that—that changes things. That, um, that definitely changes things."

He smirked down at her, close and warm and _Sasuke_. He was still beautiful and she was still annoying and okay, she still kind of wanted to have his babies.

She looked up at him. "I still hate you."

Sasuke chuckled. "Sure you do, Sakura. Sure you do."

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_fin_.  
**notes2**: happy single's awareness day, all!  
**notes3**: seriously, i know that it sucks. love sucks. please review. leave me a love story, and i'll tell you one in return. :)


	36. red eye

**disclaimer**: disclaimed.  
**dedication**: les and emily and sonya.  
**notes**: i should take vacations more often, they're inspiring. also, fuckyes Coachella.

**title**: red eye  
**summary**: Sasuke and Sakura fall in love at thirty-thousand feet. — Sasuke/Sakura; 36/5o.

—

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Sakura stretched her legs. It was late, and the plane was just about the take off—she'd been comfortably settled in first class for ten minutes, and was waiting for the flight's last stragglers to board.

(Oh, the _joy_ of late-day travel.)

And then she'd be heading home.

Dear Buddha, the thought had her nearly crying with relief. Being across an ocean for so long had her antsy—it wasn't something she could help. A consulting doctor, Sakura's job took her all over the world, and the chances to curl up in her little kitchen were few and far between. Those rare chances were treasured, cherished, never squandered.

And this was one of those chances. Sakura was going home.

Konoha was so close, Sakura could almost _taste_ it.

She looked around the first-class cabin with a sigh. Economy was a packed, as always, but the first-class cabin was near empty. There were four businessmen sitting together, all blue-chinned and tired-looking. There was a little girl and her brother sitting in front of Sakura—neither could have been older than ten years old. The last passenger in first class was a woman in a cranberry red power suit, and she, too, had kicked off her heels. Sakura caught her eye, and nodded approvingly.

The woman grinned red-painted lips, and waved a little.

Sakura sighed in satisfaction. If that was it, it would be a beautiful flight, she thought with a smile. The seat next to her was empty; the seat beneath her was cushy and perfect and she had a thick blanket and thicker pillow to keep her comfortable.

Sakura once again thanked her lucky stars for that internship with Tsunade. The woman may have been almost clinically insane, but she was legend in her own right and, regardless that she drank like a fish and often shirked work, she was everything Sakura had ever wanted to be in the medical world.

She sighed again, and sat back in the seat. Just a few more minutes and they'd be in the air, and she'd be able to get some _sleep_.

The thought was utterly enchanting.

Sakura closed her eyes and smiled to herself. She could almost taste the espresso, could already almost smell the—cologne? What?

Her eyes snapped open, and she looked up to find her vision obscured by wide shoulders, narrow waist, and black suit white-shirt _man_-ness.

Oh no.

Oh _no_.

Her perfect, solitary flight was in danger of being _ruined_ by the presence of this _man_.

This would not stand.

Sakura huffed, and continued to glare at his chest (it was a very nice chest, but she was _not_ going to tell this perfection-ruiner _that_). He needed to _go away_. He needed to go away _now_. There were plenty of other seats in first class, and she'd be damned if he—oh.

The man sat down with an audible exhalation of breath, and Sakura got her first good look at his features.

Oh.

_Oh_.

_Okay_.

Well.

_That_ changed things (no it did not). He was… he was _pretty_. Like, actually _pretty_. Prettier than Sakura was (what was this seriously).

She held her breath and counted to ten. _Look at the ceiling, don't breathe, don't breathe, don't breathe_.

Sakura got control of herself.

She tilted her head, and smiled at him. "Headed home?"

He raised his head, and glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. Dark bangs fell into his face. She had to restrain herself from brushing them away. She didn't know where the urge came from (probably from always brushing Naruto's bangs out of his face, that moron), but she pushed it away.

"Yes," he murmured, inclining his head a scant inch. "Konoha."

"Me, too. I haven't been home since—"

The roar of the jet's engines cut off her next words. Sakura swallowed both the rest of the sentence and her stomach. It had come up to her mouth, and had she not been prepared for it, she would have lost the contents of her stomach everywhere, and wouldn't _that_ have been just a _great_ first impression.

Sakura _hated_ take-off.

She didn't say anything again until they were well off the ground, and even then, it was more to breathe a sigh of relief that they hadn't crashed and died and been burnt to a crisp. "Thank Buddha…"

She heard him chuckle.

Sakura looked over at him. His lips were still quirked up at the edges.

"What? I don't like flying. Or, I just don't like the taking off part. I don't mind the rest. But the takeoff… makes me grit my teeth, to put it lightly," she told him. "I'm Sakura, by the way."

He nodded. "Sasuke."

She grinned, razor-sharp. "It's nice to meet you."

"Hn," he murmured.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

He stared blankly at her.

Sakura raised an eyebrow, and shot him an amused half-smile. "You don't talk to people much, do you?"

"Not really."

"That's too bad," Sakura told him, honest.

He just shrugged.

Sakura stared out the jet window and watched the sun burn across the clouds below them. She squinted against the crimson light, and thought about how her little kitchen would look, cream and yellow and airy, in this kind of light.

_Almost home, almost home, almost home_…

The crackle of the intercom system had Sakura looking up.

"_Sorry to both you, ladies and gents. We'll be coming around to take your orders—supper will be in half an hour,_" said the flight attendant.

Right on cue, Sakura's stomach grumbled. Sasuke looked over, eyebrow raised, to find Sakura grinning sheepishly.

"What? I'm hungry. I haven't eaten anything since the crappy continental I had before I left the hotel."

"Lunch?"

Sakura shook her head. "Work, last minute shopping, last minute _packing_, just… everything. And getting to the airport—getting through security took _forever_, I just wanted to go _home_."

She paused and sighed. "It was a long day."

"Hn."

Because that just said _so much about him_.

"What about—?"

"'Scuse me. Sorry t'interrupt, but, uh, I need your orders—chicken or fish or lamb? They all come with mashed potatoes and greens."

_Ugh, plane fare_, Sakura thought. But it was better than nothing, her stomach reminded her with another loud growl. "Mmm, chicken, I guess. Sasuke?"

"Lamb," he murmured.

The stewardess nodded, and moved on. She shot a glance back at Sasuke, flushed, and seemed to giggle a little.

"You get that a lot, don't you?" Sakura asked.

Sasuke pinched the bridge of his nose. "Yes. Often at the worst possible times."

"Mmm," Sakura hummed.

The sweet scent of hot food filtered through the first class cabin. "Oh, for Buddha's sake, do they _have_ to do things like that?"

Sasuke looked over at her, his lips actually pulling up in a smile (Sakura had a feeling that he didn't smile often, and that was a shame). "'Course. Nothing like a tease."

She shook her head at him, amused. "Tease?"

He just shrugged.

The food came.

It smelled heavenly. Sakura peeled the foil wrapping away from her chicken—it looked like lemongrass, but she couldn't tell, and really, right at that second, she didn't care—and happily dug in. There was nothing ladylike about it, but Sakura didn't have the energy to try to impress anyone, right then.

(The woman in the cranberry suit across the aisle caught her eye again and smirked.)

Sakura shoved a bite of chicken in her mouth, chewed and swallowed, and then raised her eyes to Sasuke's face. "So," she said. "Any siblings?"

"…What?"

"We're going to be sitting next to each other for the next twelve hours. Tell me you have something better to do."

He seemed to measure her for a long moment.

"Two," he said finally. "An older brother—" and here he ground his jaw just a little, and Sakura had to wonder if the relationship was strained "—and a younger sister. You?"

Sakura shook her head. "Biologically an only child. But there's—well, it's complicated, but I have a sort-of brother who was sort-of adopted only sort of not and he's actually kind of also my cousin."

He looked at her, and then ever-so-slightly quirked his eyebrow.

(Sakura defiantly ignored the lurch in her stomach. Hello, _attraction_.)

"It's a long story. But Naruto ended up being my brother. Either way he's a moron, but I love him. Favourite colour?"

Sasuke let out a long-suffering sigh. "You talk too much."

"And you don't seem to talk enough. What's your favourite colour? It's not a complicated question!"

"Navy."

And that was only the beginning.

—

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"Choose; being decomposed alive by flesh-eating maggots, or being ripped to pieces by a shark?"

It was eleven-thirty, and they were somewhere over the middle of the ocean. The cabin lights in both economy and business had been out for hours, but Sakura and Sasuke sat in first class, and whispered the night away.

"You are the most morbid girl I have ever met."

"I'm not a girl, now _choose_!"

"The shark," Sasuke grumbled.

Sakura smiled wide and said "Your turn."

"Hn."

"_Sasuke_."

He groaned, and said "Choose; fire or water?"

"That's so boring. Part of Choose is grossing the other person out! Haven't you ever played it before?"

"_Sakura_," he stressed.

"Ugh, fine. Fire. Choose; never sleeping ever again or never going home."

"Never sleeping."

And Sakura understood.

Having a home to go back was too important for things like sleep.

—

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Sakura was looking out the window over the wide expanse of water. It was completely black; seeing was completely impossible.

But the stars shined bright overhead and Sakura breathed a sigh of wonder. "We're the past, Sasuke. We're seeing history."

"Hn?"

"The stars. That light is from millions and millions of years ago. Light travels so fast, but we're only just seeing it now. It fascinates me."

She was pretty sure he was staring at her strangely.

(But then, most people did.)

"It's just… proof, you know? Proof that we're—humans, I mean—aren't the be-all-end-all. After we kill ourselves off, the stars will still shine. The world won't end when humans do."

"Hn."

"It's reassuring to me. That no matter how bad we as a race screw up, we're really just a blip in time. Everything will keep turning for another billion years, until the sun blows up. We'll all be long dead before then, but still. There's something… I don't know. I probably sound crazy."

"I think you have a point," he said quietly.

"You do?"

He nodded.

Sakura brushed flyaway strands of pale pink hair out of her face and grinned.

"Thanks," she said. "For saying that."

"Don't worry about it," Sasuke shrugged.

"I won't, but—"

Sakura decided she'd not say anything else, because the quiet would be good.

(But sometimes she just couldn't stop her mouth.)

"—looking at stars is like drinking champagne, bubbles in my nose, silly and sweet, rolling across my tongue like _pop-pop-pop_. And it's kind of nice, you know, because no one else has ever done this with me before. No one ever does things like this."

And that was when she realized that she was over-tired and that she was probably talking like she ought to have been institutionalized. And, for god's sake, maybe she should have been. Actually, most doctors, probably, ought to have been institutionalized.

…She was thinking too much again.

Sasuke just looked at her, and said "Go to sleep, Sakura. You're talking crazy."

Talking crazy didn't have anything on what went through Sakura's head.

It would be morning, soon.

She sighed, and hummed _we'll do it all, everything, on our own_.

—

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"Sakura," a quiet voice in her ear whispered. It was deep and attractive and _where have I heard that, before_?

"Wha—wha' time izit?" she yawned, rubbing sleep from her eye with the heel of her right hand.

(There was going to be makeup everywhere.)

"Look out the window," he said again.

Sakura did.

Konoha stretched out before her, skyscrapers and shantytown houses all in rows. The roads looked like veins, and even from miles and miles above them, Sakura could feel them bring the city to life.

Konoha breathed, and Sakura knew that she was home.

—

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"Thank you for keeping me company. It was… nice. Talking to you, I mean. It was nice to meet you."

"Hn."

"Oh! Um, my bag—it's right there. Could you grab it? Thanks. Um. I guess I should—"

"Yeah."

"Yeah. Right. Bye!"

—

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The cab home was lonesome.

Sakura unlocked her front door and dragged her suitcase in behind her. She closed the door, and stood, for a moment, all alone.

Her house sang in response. Her little kitchen called; the floor creaked welcome, and Sakura smiled.

(She was probably never going to see him again.)

But her kitchen was warm and happy, pale yellow with white trim, looking like sunshine, and Sakura was okay with that. Sometimes you met people for one moment in life, and they changed your world, but then you'd never be able to see them again.

And she was okay with that.

Really.

Sakura upended her purse on the table, searching for a cigarette.

(Sometimes she just needed a fix.)

Lipstick, change, wallet, eyeliner, more change, a pack of gum all fell out, dropping every which way in a pell-mell of the ordinary.

_No cigarettes. Damn it_, Sakura thought with a sigh.

But there was also a white card. It looked a bit like a business card. Sakura picked it up and flipped it over.

There was a number scrawled there, and the words

_I owe you a cigarette.  
-Sasuke_

Sakura looked up, and smiled.

—

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_fin_.  
**notes2**: happy april fools, all! now i'm off to go drinking, because it's FRIDAY, FRIDAY, GOTTA GET DOWN ON FRIDAY i hate that song


	37. paper thin

**disclaimer**: disclaimed.  
**dedication**: to Fiona Apple. & Philrya. for totally different reasons, but there you are.  
**notes**: three hours of sleep in forty eight hours. hay girl haaaaaaay. an interesting fact: "cunt" is my favourite word.  
**trigger warning**: references to abuse.

**title**: paper thin  
**summary**: On running away. — Sasuke/Sakura; 37/1oo.

—

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The first time she asked, it was summer, they were nine and she was bleeding from her mouth.

"Will you run away with me?"

Sasuke stared at her. Her name was Sakura. She was older than he was, but also shorter. She lived next door and sometimes Sasuke couldn't sleep because her parents were yelling so loud.

(The walls were paper thin, in this town.)

The first time she asked, he didn't know what to say. His mother was making tuna casserole that night.

Sasuke hated tuna casserole.

But running away would make his mother sad.

"No," he said.

Sakura looked at him calmly, the bags under her eyes more pronounced than ever. It looked like someone had given her a pair of black eyes, and Sasuke winced and thought that maybe someone had.

"Okay," she said. "Maybe later."

Sakura would be okay until later.

Whenever that was.

—

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That summer only got worse from there.

Sasuke watched Sakura get progressively quieter and quieter. By the time school started, she barely spoke at all.

He wondered if he ought to have done something.

They were in the same class and sometimes Sasuke watched her when he knew no one was looking. She seemed a little better; like school got her mind off things, and he guessed it did.

But they never walked home from school together anymore.

Sasuke wasn't sure if he was thankful, or what.

—

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Sasuke was never really sure when she stopped talking to him. It might have been at ten or eleven or twelve, but at fourteen, the most either of them expected from the other was inadequate eye contact. They'd both moved on, both had their own lives.

(But the walls.

The walls.

They were paper thin, and the screaming—the _screaming_. Sasuke didn't know how she stood the screaming.)

He looked out the window, and caught a flash of pink. She was curled in the window nook with the window open, staring blankly outwards. Sasuke watched her for a long time, before opening his window.

He'd never heard the house so silent.

"Sakura," he called, lowly.

She snapped her head up, and stared at him, wounded animal eyes wild. For a moment, Sasuke barely recognized her.

"Oh," she said. "Sasuke. Sorry. I didn't—"

Sasuke inclined his head a fraction on an inch. They looked at each other for a moment; Sasuke thought that she looked too old for a girl so young.

"Are you alright?" Sasuke found himself asking.

Sakura snorted. "Am I ever okay?"

He wondered if she knew how rhetoric she sounded. But from the far-away look in her eyes, he had a feeling that she did. She looked like a painting, still and soft and sad despite the silence and the sun.

She tilted her head and looked at him, long bangs in her eyes, hair spilling over her shoulders like bubblegum tears. "Will you come with me?"

"Hn."

"I'll take that as a no," she smiled, wry.

Sasuke didn't say anything, and watched her watch the sky.

"Sometimes I just… want to go, you know?" she asked, softly. "Just go."

"We will," Sasuke said quietly.

The wry smile remained in place, and Sasuke thought he saw the shutters behind her eyes snap shut. "But not today. And I want to go _today_. I'll see you later, Sasuke."

And she closed the window and disappeared.

—

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She started running away.

She was gone every other day; her seat at school was almost always empty. Sasuke pretended not to notice, and the year(s) flew by. Fifteen came and went and Sakura ran and ran and ran.

But they dragged her back every time.

Sasuke watched them drag her back into the house, snarling and screaming. The whole street could probably hear; the whole street was awake and listening, despite the darkness of the night, despite everything.

But no one did anything.

They all stayed in bed and shivered. Sakura's rage was a bitter taste in their mouths, Sasuke knew.

The police dragged the thrashing girl to the front door of her home.

The eerie silence that descended along the street when the front door to her home was opened made Sasuke clench his teeth. Forcing her home wasn't compassion; it was cruel.

Sasuke wondered why he couldn't just say _yes_.

—

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"Don't be a cunt, Ino. It's just hair," Sakura muttered.

Sasuke could barely hear her over the roar of the classroom. Sakura and her best friend were sitting directly in front of him. Tenth grade was hard on everyone, and Sasuke closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose to ward off the oncoming headache. Sakura's best friend huffed and tossed blonde hair over her shoulder.

"Sakura, your hair was _gorgeous_! Why?"

"Because I wanted it gone," Sakura replied, nonchalant. She shook her head, and Sasuke watched the newly-short tips of her hair dance.

There was something in the way she said it.

It was like it wasn't the only thing she wanted gone.

Like she wanted to be gone.

Like she always wanted to be gone.

But then Sasuke thought that he probably didn't know her well enough to be sure. Didn't know her well enough to know that that was desperation in her voice.

(And he was always lying to himself, wasn't he?)

But he did hear the slamming doors and the anger.

He thought that maybe she was paving her way to hell. He thought that maybe she was paving the way to hell for them both. That maybe she was paving the way to hell for them all.

And he couldn't bring himself to stop her.

—

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Sasuke had no idea when he realized that he had started taking care of her. It was somewhere between her bruised eyes and her penchant for stumbling through trash cans. Maybe it was rooted in childhood, even. He'd always had a strange attachment to her, always; even when she was at her brightest and he was at his darkest and they were both at their lowest.

And he couldn't let her die.

They were sitting on his porch, mid-summer. He was just about to turn eighteen; Sakura was already there, wise-only-not and short and bright pink with knowing eyes that belonged to someone much older.

But then, she'd always been like that.

Sasuke downed a glass of amber liquid that belonged to his older brother, and looked at her through lazy eyes. He watched her tuck her still-short hair behind her ears.

Sometimes he just watched her.

Sakura smiled at him. "Why're you looking at me like that, Sasuke?"

"Hn."

"That's not an answer."

"I know."

But they both knew she'd take it and run, because that was what Sakura did. She knotted her hair up in her hands, yawning at the sky. She smiled at Sasuke, and said "You're funny, you know?"

"Hn."

"Would you run away with me?"

It was the eighth time she'd sprung that question on him, Sasuke thought.

(Not that he was keeping count.)

He looked at her for a very, very long moment. They'd graduated. In the fall, he was going away and she was going away and he had a sick feeling that they wouldn't ever see each other again.

"Where?" he asked, slowly.

Sakura's head jerked up, and she stared at him, wide-eyed. He'd always said _no_. There had never been any question.

_Where_ was a question.

"The coast," she replied. "I want to see the ocean on fire. I want to drive forever and see the ocean on fire."

_I want to see everything on fire_, hung in the air, unspoken.

Sasuke contemplated, for a moment. They could go. Drive forever, like she'd said. There was nothing stopping them. Paper thin walls for nothing; they could go and never come back.

And it was funny, because Sasuke had thought that Sakura needed it.

But she wasn't the only one who needed it.

He knew that.

"Go pack your shit, Sakura," he told her quietly. "We leave in the morning."

—

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_fin_.  
**notes3**: you guys. YOU GUYS. I HAVE FINISHED MY FIRST YEAR OF UNIVERSITY.  
**notes4**: life is sparkly. please review!


	38. dark blue

**disclaimer**: disclaimed.  
**dedication**: to best friend's basement.  
**notes**: do you guys have any idea how many barely-stared oneshots are sitting in my SasuSaku folder? it's _ridikulus_. … sometimes i guess i just can't find the words. also, you all should mosey on over to sasusaku_month on LJ. beautiful people, there. ;)  
**notes2**: canon ended a long time ago in my head. just sayin'.

**title**: dark blue  
**summary**: Konoha in the rainy season. When it rains, some people just get wet. Other people decide to take a walk. — Sasuke/Sakura; 38/5o.

—

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Stormclouds.

Sakura stood in the rain, breathed in, and remembered.

The gush of air was cold and fresh against her skin—smelled of growing things, wet things, springtime; renewal. A hazy pink line far to the east and away from the storm clouds indicated sunrise to come, but Sakura thought that she still had some time.

It was rare that anyone was out on a Sunday morning.

Not this early, and certainly not in this weather. The rain was soft against her skin, pattering against the closed umbrella that was tucked beneath her arm and the road around her. The loose-packed dirt at the edge of the pavement was already turning to muck. It would remain so for some time—Konoha was only just entering its rainy season, and the roads would be a pain for weeks to come.

Sakura, in a white lab coat, turned her face up to the sky. She'd always thought that rain had meant leaving, but—well. Sasuke had proved that theory wrong a long time ago, and wet and muck were sometimes so much better than sunshine.

The rain on her face felt like freedom.

She set her umbrella down and slipped her shoes off. She was already soaked through to the bone, and more rain could never hurt. Sakura picked her shoes up, tucked her umbrella under her arm and walked to the side of the road. Mud squished between her toes.

She took another deep breath of the wet air, revelling in the feeling of just-washed oxygen in her lungs. For a moment, she did little else.

And then she set off, umbrella tucked beneath her arm, shoes in hand. She was headed for home just as the day was born, comfortable as she was.

After all, some people walked in the rain.

Others only got wet.

—

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Daylight.

(—_through the window, darkly_.)

Sakura wasn't sure when her boys had become _her boys_.

There was something quiet about it; something soft that felt like a distant memory of a time long-forgotten, from when she was less jaded. Less angry. Less bitter. Less tired. Less sad.

The funny thing was that those boys—_her_ boys—were more family than her bloodkin. Her mother couldn't even look her in the face, anymore. Sakura had simply stopped going home. It made everything easier.

She lay on her bed and stared up at the ceiling of her apartment. She listened to the creaks of the old building. Empty buildings made noise. Empty buildings always seemed so lonely. Empty buildings always seemed so _sad_.

("_Did you hear that building, Sasuke-kun? It was __**moaning**__!"_

"_Hn."_)

Maybe that was the reason that she just couldn't stand them.

Sakura kicked the covers off her legs. Anything was better than listening to the silence of her empty apartment. _Anything_.

The boys—_her_ boys—wouldn't be back for… for awhile. Sometimes Sakura pulled double-shifts (triple, quadruple, quintuple; she'd slept there, before) at the hospital because there was something about being busy that kept her from going crazy.

Er.

Crazy-_er_.

Being busy kept her from worrying that they wouldn't come home. Being busy kept her sleep silent. Being busy kept her from seeing dead Naruto in the streets, dead Kakashi in the trees, dead Sai splattered across the sidewalk, dead Sasuke (dead Sasuke, dead Sasuke, dead Sasuke; it was _always_ dead Sasuke, and that one scared her the most).

It was still raining outside. Sakura pulled her still-wet lab coat on, the damp sleeves clinging to her skin. The patter of the rain was endless. She idly wondered if it was ever going to stop.

Sakura stepped out of her apartment, and got wet.

—

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Losing track of time in the hospital was easy. Closed blinds, cramped office without windows, utter silence; yes, it was easy to forget.

Sakura slept at the hospital that night.

And the night after.

And the night after.

And still, the rain fell.

—

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Afternoon.

Sakura only went home because Tsunade ordered her to.

She could have pulled another shift. _Really_. She would have been _fine_. Her head only hurt a little and her limbs only felt a little like lead, but Sakura was a healer, and people _needed_ her.

(_Being needed is a nice feeling_, Sakura thought vaguely. _Naruto needs me. Kakashi-sensei needs me. Hell, even __**Sai**__ needs me. Sasuke-kun… well. He hates needing people. But he needs me, too. He __**needs**__ me. Isn't that… __**worth**__ something?_)

Sakura ran her fingers through her hair and wandered in the direction that she thought was towards home. Everything was a bit foggy. Getting the key in the lock was a challenge that Sakura didn't want to deal with.

Sakura swung herself up the fire escape, collapsed on her bed, and passed out.

She would sleep for twenty-seven hours.

—

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Night.

They stole back through Konoha's entrance in the dark. Bleeding and bloody, Sasuke hated that he couldn't walk on his own. It was Naruto's fault—but he, too, was limping, despite the disgustingly large grin on his face.

Living always seemed to do that to Naruto.

Blood leaked around their tracks, footprints dark and wet as they half-dragged each other in through Konoha's gates. Beat up and bruised, the two men dragged each other towards their respective homes.

Sasuke wondered exactly what Naruto's girlfriend was going to say when she saw the shape he'd come home in. He wouldn't be surprised if she incapacitated his legs for three days to get him to _stay put_.

(No, Sasuke _was not scared_ of Naruto's girlfriend.)

…Maybe they ought to go see Sakura first.

He stopped himself.

No. Sakura—no. Sasuke ran his fingers though his hair, matted with sweat and the sticky wetness of blood; his ANBU uniform was soaked through with it. Not even the rain could wash it away. He shook rainwater out of his eyes.

He hated being wet.

(He hated not being able to control himself, too.

To Sakura's, he went.)

—

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Darkness.

Sakura woke to the sound of rain against the window (she'd dreamed that it was never going to stop; they'd all drown in dark blue before the waters receded. Drowned softly; drowned in silence—drowning was a quiet way to go).

She sat up, bleary and unable to think, disoriented in the dark. Jostled by the extra weight on the bed, she whispered "What are you doing here?"

"Sleeping," came the muffled reply.

Sasuke was face-down on the other side of the bed, hair sticking up in odd directions. There was blood everywhere. She was going to have to wash her sheets.

"I have to get to the hospital," she murmured. The warmth and pale green of healing chakra washed over Sasuke's skin. It was almost habit, but as her eyes adjusted, Sakura was able to watch the cuts and bruises disappear.

(_He needed her, he needed her, he needed her_—it was a bit like exultation.)

"Hn," he grunted.

"Come for a walk?"

"It's raining."

"It'll be raining for weeks, Sasuke-kun. Might as well enjoy it."

Sakura slipped off the bed, and Sasuke watched her dress in the darkness. Backlit from the orange streetlamp outside, she looked so small. So weak. So fragile. So _Sakura_.

"Hn," he grunted again.

Sasuke stood.

And together, they walked.

—

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_fin_.  
**notes3**: please review! :D


	39. three flights up

**disclaimer**: insert witty disclaimer here.  
**dedication**: to crying.  
**notes**: my Base Of Operations has been moved to the basement. leave me a message after the beep.

**title**: three flights up  
**summary**: It was sad that even though she'd love him forever, forever was always, always ending. — Sasuke/Sakura; 39/5o.

—

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Sakura counted the ceiling tiles in her apartment. Stretched out on her bed, flat on her back, she stared at the water stains in the corner where the rain always leaked through the cracks in the walls.

It was cold. The window was open wide and the sky was white with cloud-cover, the curtains moving with the _thrush_ of the wind. Her breath came out in puffs of smoke and it was sad and funny because it was _May_, and shouldn't the sun be out?

But no.

The sound of downtown Konoha sang up the skyscrapers and filtered in through the open window and Sakura hummed along to it like a familiar tune. There was an edge of pain to it, something like regret and cigarette smoke or maybe dying, but Sakura couldn't place the taste.

Maybe it tasted like Sasuke (no-strings-attached-because-we-were-in-the-middle-which-was-a-lot-like-dying-and-you-were-just-someone-warm-and-alive).

And wasn't _that_ ironic.

Sakura smiled, whimsy, and thought about driving until they both lost the road, and galaxy water dripping down her throat, into her eyes and being so-drunk-I'm-stumbling-I-think-I-need-you-to-save-me-so-save-me-Sasuke-okay?

She breathed in and out and counted ceiling tiles, because it was better than thinking about Sasuke and going away. Maybe it was like staying up all night with the TV on mute. Maybe it was like taking things for granted. Maybe it was like waiting for someone to come back home.

Maybe it was about living in empty apartment buildings.

Maybe it was about moving on.

Sakura rolled over, pressed her face into her pillow, and tried not to think.

—

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She went through the motions.

Of life, that is. She went through the motions of living because that was what was expected of her. She was _Haruno Sakura_ and there were some things that were just simply not tolerated.

It was absurd.

_Life_ was absurd.

_Insecurity_ was absurd.

Sakura brushed her bangs out of her eyes, and smiled at the nurses in Konoha's general hospital. They grinned back, scrubbed up in blue, purple, flowered pink. She dashed through the ER, pulling on a lab coat as she went, mentally preparing herself to be immersed in every new pain; every new unhappy diagnosis, every new scandal, every new birth.

It was what kept her going.

The lack of monotony kept her from tearing her hair out. And while watching people die was morbid, Sakura couldn't think of anything more interesting.

(Everyone in the medical profession was just the littlest bit sick, Sakura thought mildly.

Then again, who _wasn't_ just the littlest bit sick?)

And so she went to her little corner of the hospital, and prepared for another day. There was blood under her nails and exhaustion waiting for her at the end of the day, and Sakura couldn't wait to get there.

It meant that it was another day over.

It meant she'd made through another day without him.

Sakura could do this.

She could.

—

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"Have you heard from Sasuke recently?"

The clenching feeling in Sakura's gut was unwelcome and sickeningly familiar—it happened every time anyone said his name.

Sakura shook her head. "No, I haven't. Why do you ask?"

"You just seem to be missing him."

"I'm not."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

Sakura felt like vomiting.

—

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The faces on the street blurred together until Sakura didn't even know where she was going. It was all just a smear of flesh-coloured faces, sad eyes, and grey skies.

It was like caving in.

If only a little.

Sometimes Sakura thought she must have been a little bit silly. Hung up on one guy?

_Come on, Sakura, be realistic. You'll love other people. There'll be other guys. Sasuke is just… one fish in the entire ocean. He could be anyone. Anyone could be him_.

That's what Ino said, and Sakura could see the sense in it.

But.

The funny thing was.

There was no one else. The world was a sea of apathy and Sakura didn't have the energy to wade through it. Especially not when the only place she'd end up was in front of Sasuke's old house with her hands tucked into her jacket and her breath coming out solid.

Sakura didn't want that.

She didn't want to stand in front of his apartment and pretend that everything was okay.

Because it wasn't.

Nothing was okay.

Sakura felt like she was floating, trapped in a waking nightmare where nothing was Sasuke and everything hurt. She laughed because she thought she was going crazy, but that was nothing new so she didn't even think about it.

Sakura climbed the three flights of stairs up to her empty apartment in a lab coat and wishful thinking, and wondered if starting over was even possible, anymore.

—

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The note was scribbled on the back of a business card and tucked under her front door.

_I walked by your apartment twice today._

—_S_.

Sakura looked at it for a very long moment. The writing was concise and perfect and just so _Sasuke_ that it made her want to cry a little.

"I really hate you sometimes. You know?" she said aloud.

But no one was there.

—

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"Sakura, let me in."

Only she didn't really want to.

Sakura sat with her back pressed against the cheap plywood of the door and counted all the ways she loved him—the way her child self had loved him, the way her teenage self had loved him, the way her grown-woman self loved him now. It had grown liked a crescendo of music and sadness doused with sparkling moments of happiness but she didn't know—

"I know you're in there."

—if it was enough. Would it ever be enough? Would she ever, ever be enough?

She would have barked a laugh but then he would have heard and he might actually force his way through.

Sasuke was bad for doing things like that.

"I'm not going to wait out here forever."

And this time she did laugh.

"You know, Sasuke," she told him through the locked door, "it's sad. It's sad because even though you say forever, forever is always, _always_ ending."

He stopped fiddling with the handle.

Sakura got up and went to the kitchen.

Far below her little apartment, the world sang and danced and _lived_. Sakura was left with an empty apartment, empty promises, and an empty sense of loss.

Maybe another day.

—

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_fin_.  
**notes2**: i seem to have lost the capacity to write anything happy. or, um, anything with substance.  
**notes3**: please leave a review! also, sasusaku_month is coming up, so i suggest you all mosey on over there and sign up! LET'S HAVE AN EXPLOSION OF SASUSAKU LOVE IN JULY! =D


	40. a modest rebellion

**disclaimer**: not mine.  
**dedication**: to you, if you're reading this. thanks for sticking with me.  
**notes**: hi i'm sara and i like politics. and fairies. and pretty much everything, actually.

**title**: a modest rebellion  
**summary**: Kiss the hunger out of me. — Sasuke/Sakura; 4o/5o.

—

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One time they fucked during a thunderstorm in the parking lot of a church at night.

It was a dirty thing, violent; under the rain in the back of his truck they were both naked of all pretence.

And everything else, but that didn't count.

Sakura shivered. She was pressed back against the leather interior of Sasuke's truck, shadowed and chilled in the dim light with her knees around his hips. Even then, all she could see were the knobbly protrusions of his bones, pale crescents jutting out from the landscape of his skin.

His fingers danced along her thigh and Sakura squirmed because it twisted at her insides. She could count the ways she hated herself, but it would take too long and Sasuke was like shooting up—she never could get enough.

It was heavy breaths, still on the comedown and everything felt like sex and sweat.

"You'll never get it out."

"Hn?"

"The smell."

She felt him smirk against her skin. His lips pulled up. "Why would I want to?"

Sakura didn't even know if that was a rhetorical question or not. But it was a question and Sakura had always been good at answering questions, so—"Because it's disgusting?"

He rumbled and shook his head just a little, the smirk searing her skin.

Stark naked, Sakura slipped out from underneath Sasuke. She clicked open the door to the downpour outside and left it wide open to let the fresh scent of it wash in and cleanse them both.

The rain sizzled on the pavement; it was the product of a hot, dry summer, bordering on desert-like conditions. This was the first water from the sky they'd had since spring, and Sakura revelled in it, shivering and without clothes. Sasuke studied the knobs of her spine and her shoulders. She cut a sharp picture, sitting there against the orange glow of the streetlamp and the rain with her back facing him.

She looked back over her shoulder at his, and said "Let's do something crazy."

Sasuke stared at her.

"Sakura," he said quietly, "we're in a church parking lot. We can't get much more blasphemous than that."

She grinned widely at him. "We're having _sex_ in a church parking lot. Or at least, we _were_. So let's do something crazy!"

Frankly, Sasuke would not be averse to doing it again.

"We're done crazy," he said delicately.

Which was true. That had done crazy. Sakura did crazy on a daily basis, and Sasuke and everyone else was dragged along for the ride, whether they liked it or not.

"Crazy-_er_!" she insisted.

Sasuke didn't know how much more crazy he could handle, but the funny thing was that with Sakura, everything was crazy. She swung her legs out of the truck in the rain, back and forth like a child.

He dragged a finger down her spine and watched her shudder.

There was something deeply satisfying about it.

She smiled at him then, over her shoulder with her neck craned around in a contortionist's dream pose. There was something vaguely sinister about it but Sasuke didn't flinch away from her. And then she hopped out of the truck, completely unashamed of her nakedness, and went to dance in the rain.

She was a pale shadow, up and down on the fringes of his imagination, moving to nothing but the sound of the rain and her own humming. It echoed through the night, sprinkled with a sort of innocence and magic of real, true freedom. It was tongue-in-cheek, and Sakura was half-lit and happy.

And Sasuke had never seen anything like it.

It wasn't the first time he'd watched her dance the night away. It wouldn't be the last.

But he would be the only one to see her like this.

He slid from the truck, and went to her.

"I wondered when you were gonna get up," she smiled as she stilled. She looked up at him with wide eyes, pupils dilated so wide they almost swallowed up her whole iris, leaving a miniscule ring of green to flash up at him.

Sasuke stood over her.

He could feel her trembling and he pulled her flush against him, arms around her waist. Her hair had gone dark fuchsia, plastered to her cheeks and Sasuke moved it off her face to press his forehead against hers.

"Hi," said Sakura.

"Hey," Sasuke replied.

"I love you, you know," she whispered.

"I know."

Sakura smiled at him in a way that told him she understood the unspoken sentiment and she kissed him like that, a very soft press of smiling lips against lips. They were still, the two of them, then, caught in a hopeless romantic's idea of a joke. It was cliché and perfect and _crazy_.

She drew back and, unable to help herself, started to laugh. Sasuke caught it, too, and chuckled into her shoulder, until they were a heap of mirth in the middle of the parking lot.

The laughter cut through the night, a thread of light and life. It was the most joyful thing that place had experienced in a long time, and Sasuke hoisted her up and kissed her until she was breathless. He kissed her again and again. He bore her to the ground beneath them, all white lines and the dirty excess of oil.

"Ashphalt burn," Sakura whispered with a giggle. "Kinky."

Sasuke almost grinned. He kissed her collar bone. "Shut up."

Sakura smiled at the sky.

"Okay," she said. "Okay."

And then neither of them spoke again for a long, long time.

—

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_fin_.  
**notes2**: sekfuhskjh. this was a long time coming, i guess. um. please don't hate me for disappearing all the time? I LOVE YOU.  
**notes3**: please leave a review, and we'll see if i can start pumping these out again. :D


	41. october, be kind

**disclaimer**: disclaimed. actually fuck you i own this situation.  
**dedication**: to the fucking idiots i'm somehow friends with. i love you all fiercely, even if i think you're stupid as fuck.  
**notes**: _this cannot be my life_.  
**notes2**: MOSTLY THIS IS JUST A RANT OKAY.

**title**: october, be kind  
**summary**: Say goodbye to the world you thought you lived in. — Sasuke/Sakura; 41/5o.

—

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He finds her on the bathroom floor of his tiny apartment, hair soaked and sticking to her skin two days after their whole world ended, and doesn't say a word. It is Wednesday afternoon, pouring outside, and he figures she should have been in classes or something, but instead she's sitting on his bathroom floor in wet clothes, looking like she didn't give a fuck.

"You look like shit," Sakura tells him cheerily.

"So do you," he replies. "How did you get in?"

She grins widely, looking odd in the flickering light—fuck, he knew he should have changed that bulb when he'd had the chance. "Because I'm a ninja," Sakura says.

"Sakura," he says. His voice is grating and rough; his eyes are narrowed and dark.

"Seriously? Your mom gave me a key weeks ago," she laughs nonchalantly, like it's the easiest thing she's ever done. She pats the bit of tiled bathroom floor next to her. "Wanna sit?"

He shrugs and eyes her soaked clothing.

She figures that this is probably warranted, but Sakura shrugs and lifts her eyebrow in a I-just-one-upped-you sort of movement. "It's this," she says, "or getting really, really, staggering, disgusting, stupid drunk in the kitchen. Take your pick, Sasuke-kun."

Sasuke thinks that this is an unfair deal, but sits anyway. She smiles and drops her head to his shoulder, and suddenly they are fifteen again, not almost-twenty and nineteen, respectively.

"It's pretty fucked up, isn't it?" she asks. It's a rhetorical question, because, um, _yeah_, it is pretty fucked up. The whole thing is pretty fucked up, but she kind of thinks that they live on the fucked up things because there's nothing else. She can feel Sasuke nodding. "I mean, Ino's _pregnant_."

"Fucking Kiba," Sasuke snorts.

This time it's Sakura who nods.

"And they want us—_us_—to be godparents. Like, what do they think they're doing? They're barely nineteen! They're not _ready_ for this!"

He knows she probably has an entire rant built up. Sakura needs to get it out of her system while she still has the chance, before it sinks into her soul and festers there for the rest of her life. It's probably just her aunt talking through her, he thinks. That woman is _terrifying_ when she's angry, and if there is one thing that she's instilled in Sakura, it is common sense.

"What are we gonna do?" she whispers.

The bathroom light flickers overhead.

He shrugs a little. He's not sure what they're going to do. This—it throws the balance off, between the four of them. It's a hard-won balance, and neither of them know what to do, now.

"You know," she says. "You know, Hinata called us a love doodle, when I tried to explain how we—the four of us, I mean—how we work. Like, you and me and Ino and Kiba. I tried to explain that."

Sasuke smirked. "Tell me, how did that go?"

Sakura made a face. "She called us a _love-doodle_. Not even a love-square-thing. A love-_doodle_. I kind of think I'm offended? Sort of. Vaguely. A little bit. I dunno."

He chuckles. Softly, sadly. "It's true."

"I guess."

The light glances off her hair, turning the gossamer pink iridescent as a dragonfly wing. He reaches over and toys with the still-wet strands. They sit side by side, almost touching but not, legs stretched out and uncomfortable on the tile. His voice is dark and honeyed when he asks "How did you describe _us_?"

Sakura tips her head back against the wall and sighs. "It's kind of a long story."

"I know it already."

"Then why do you want me to tell it again?"

"Just because," Sasuke says, and that is the end of the argument.

She pulls a deep breath of air into her lungs, and tries to find the words.

"You're in love with Ino and I at the same time. Ino's in love with you and Kiba at the same time. You and Kiba are best friends. Kiba broke my heart in tenth grade and kissed me like two weeks ago, and I'm still mostly in love with you. Ino is _my_ best friend. And now they're pregnant and you and I are going to be _godparents_! Just—we're…"

She pauses, and then continues. "We're messy. The four of us, we're messy."

For a minute, she wonders what he thinks of her rendition of their shared history. What does he think of the fact that, yeah, okay, she is still in love with him? What does he think of the fact that Kiba had kissed her, two weeks previously and drunk as a sailor come home? What does he think of the fact that they are messy?

What does he _think_?

(_Does_ he think?)

But Sasuke zeroes in on one fact and one fact only. "Mostly? _Mostly_?"

She stares at him aghast. She cannot believe he is serious, but she can tell that he is—he is Very Very Serious. This is very, very amusing. Her lips twitch, and then any control she had is gone. Sakura laughs so hard that she doubles over, and accidentally slams her head back against the wall, wincing in pain. "Yes, _mostly_, Sasuke-kun."

She thinks he is actually offended, which makes the situation funnier still.

She laughs herself to tears and then she sits there and hiccups, feeling the laughter leave and she wants to cry. She wants more than anything to cry because, oh _god_, _what_ do they think they are _doing_?

Everything hurts.

"How did they tell you?" she hiccups, wiping away stray tears.

Sasuke looks at her strangely, like _is this something you really want to know_? But she nods. She wants to know. Needs to know.

"Over the phone. I was at work," he mutters.

This seems to be a sore spot. Sakura wants to laugh because she can one-up him again (and maybe that is what their relationship is all about; one-upping the other, in people and life and everything else—but who's counting). "I got a text. At four-forty-five. I think I went into shock."

He looks at her, shooting an amused glance at her, and she knows what he is imagining: her in her old ratty sweats and her hair up and her glasses on, flailing around her kitchen and screaming. When he starts to snicker, she knows that she is exactly right (of course, the image is fairly accurate, but then again, Sasuke knows How She Is, so it's not really all that surprising, Sakura thinks).

Sakura fumes.

She hits him for good measure.

"Ow!" he hisses.

"You deserve that," she tells him. She slouches back against the wall, crushed awkwardly between him and the toilet. It's gross and she'd probably be annoyed if it weren't for the fact that she was already soaked.

He drops an arm around her shoulders.

"You're going to get wet," she murmurs.

"I've been sitting next to you for half an hour," he replies, bored. "I'm already wet."

"Dirrrrrty," she laughs.

Sasuke pinches the bridge of his nose and tries to remind himself that Sakura is that special breed of stupid that is normally reserved for idiot cousins kept shut up in attics when there was company over to visit.

She grins up at him, eyes green and wide and full of mischief. "C'mon, Sasuke-kun, you totally walked right into that. And if _I_ had said that, you would have been all over it."

He snorts but doesn't deny it.

It's only a little bit true.

(Or maybe a lot.)

Sakura sighs again, and they both still. There are still things they haven't figured out—what do godparents _do_, exactly?—and they both still have so many reasons to be wary of each other. There are still so many things they haven't even begun to tackle.

"What are we going to do?" she asks again, after a long silence.

"Keep living, I guess."

Sakura pulls back and looks him straight in the face. She's very serious, for a moment, and Sasuke thinks how odd it is; Sakura is light and laughter, not this girl with a solemn face and solemn eyes who is looking at him like the very world is ending.

"Really?" she asks. "How do we do that? How do we keep—going, living, doing whatever?"

He shrugs again.

"I dunno, Sakura."

It is the most truthful thing he's said all night.

Sakura stares at him for a moment longer, before crawling into his lap and shivering there, violent and vicious in wet clothes. Her teeth chatter, but her voice is steady.

"You're such a dork," she says, affectionate. "We're going to get through this. It'll be hard and weird and… and other things, too. But we'll be okay."

Sasuke drops his chin to rest on top of her head.

"Whatever you say, Sakura. Whatever you say."

—

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_fin_.  
**notes3**: _i hate everything_.  
**notes4**: please leave a review, ladies and gents! makes my day every single time. :)


	42. fustercluck

**disclaimer**: disclaimed.  
**dedication**: to les and sonya, for not letting me implode into a ball of angst and snot.  
**notes**: and then this happened. whaddup.  
**notes2**: er. yeah. it's been a while, hasn't it? hiiiiiiiii.

**title**: fustercluck  
**summary**: Coffee shop conversations never go the way anyone wants. — Sasuke/Sakura; 42/5o.

—

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She waits for a near full half-hour in the café before the bell jingles, hands gone cold around the rim of the iced coffee she bought when she came in. It's the middle of May, too hot for this time of year, but Konoha's bloomed in the past week. Everything is green or gold or bright blue—vibrant colours that herald the coming of summer, and she thinks that the tulips are about to open. It's going to be a beautiful season.

(Almost winter, winter, still winter, construction—he was the person who said that first, and sometimes the thought of it makes her smile. It's kind of true, not that she's ever going to tell him that.)

Sakura sighs, and watches the sun reflect off the windows in the building across the street.

Her coffee's gone watery. The bell jingles, merry but too loud. She looks up, and smiles for the first time all day.

Sasuke slouches in with his hands shoved into his pockets. He glances around, and he catches her eye just as she's about to open her mouth to call his name.

Instead, she just waves, and he goes to place his order.

Sakura turns back to the window, pushes unruly pink bangs out of her eyes, and exhales.

She can do this.

It's been six months.

She can do this.

(She only freaks out a little bit, and her fingers only shake a little bit more as she texts Hinata—_oh my god, hina, what am i doing, this is STUPID WHY DID I THINK THIS WAS GOING TO WORK OUT_—and she tries to remind herself that it was Sasuke who texted her first, and that she is _not desperate_.)

(Except yeah, she kind of is.)

She takes a minute to examine him. It _has_ been six months. He looks older. There's a sharp tilt to his jaw that she's sure wasn't there before; his reticence is legendary, but this is different. Like he's tired. His lips are pressed together and pale as snow.

She thinks he should get some sun.

Sakura tucks her hair behind her ears and forces her muscles to smile. Her voice comes out husky, but at least it comes out. "How have you been?"

Sasuke's posture relaxes.

Strange, that she notices that.

It's a stupid thing to notice, and it's tiny, barely there. But she thinks his breathing's slowed, and she wonders if this is how it's always going to be between them; long periods of silence and then days on end where they don't not see each other.

Summer is good for that, maybe.

"Decent," he murmurs. "You?"

Sakura jerks her head up, blinking fast. He doesn't do that—he doesn't ask how she is, because he doesn't care anymore, didn't care then, isn't supposed to care ever. That's kind of how this goes. She cares too much, and he doesn't care at all.

And that's why she's across the country for med school, and he's working during the year off after he finished selling his soul for his business degree.

But she doesn't say that.

Instead, she traces the plastic rim of her cup with the tip of her finger, and thinks about his question. She's been crazy about her rotations, she's been crazy about her placement in the ER unit, she's been crazy about keeping Naruto alive and fed something other than ramen—

She's been crazy about a lot of things, lately.

"I've been okay," Sakura says, and kind of smiles. It's just a little thing, pressed into the corner of her mouth.

Sasuke doesn't look like he believes it for a second. His brows furrow, pull together, and she thinks for a minute that he might reach forward and curl his fingers in her hair. The gesture is familiar.

Sakura doesn't know why she leans backwards out of his reach.

Self-preservation, probably.

He freezes—

"Uchiha!"

—just as they call his drink. He stands, but the movement is unnatural, too jerky for Sasuke's normally unruffled gait. He turns, and heads to the counter, a spot of ink-dark clothes and ink-dark hair against the biscuit-coloured walls. He doesn't say anything at all.

Sakura collects herself.

And when he drops back into the uncomfortable faux-wood chair with his fancy-fuck coffee, she's grinning with cup pressed to her lower lip. _Be cool_, she tells herself, and breathes in.

He speaks before she does. "So. What's new?"

(That's twice he's surprised her in ten minutes. Sakura is suddenly off-balance, because there is something so wrong with this picture, she doesn't even begin to know where to start.)

Sakura blinks slow, curls the tips of her too-long hair around her fingers as she searchers for the words.

"Well…" they come, slow and halting. Mischievous, too, but she doesn't think too hard about that. "There's a girl in the ICU who has the _cutest_ older brother—"

Sasuke sputters everywhere, and Sakura laughs.

It takes him a whole minute to get his breathing back under control. "Sakura—"

"Oh, come _on_, Sasuke, that was _funny_!"

"Wasn't," he grumbles. "Just—don't."

"So was," she sings at him.

Something clicks into place, and it's like no time has passed at all. Sakura can do teasing. She can do teasing because teasing is easy and it's what she's always done—Sasuke always was her favourite target, and now is no different. She grins again, and it is easier now.

(Back to breathing air instead of broken glass. She can do this. She's doing this. She is.)

"Wasn't," Sasuke grumbles again. He looks fourteen again, pouting at his mother because she won't let him have an extra popsicle. Mikoto laughs and laughs. It is so good.

Sakura's heart aches. She misses Mikoto.

"So what else is new?" she asks. Thinking about his family hurts. She doesn't want to hurt, right now.

"I'm going to Oto in the fall."

Sakura goggles. "You've already been accepted?"

"For law," he says.

Sakura's throat closes tight. She tries the half-smile again. It's easier than the alternative. "Well, that's good."

Silence, then:

"What, that's all I get?"

Sakura blinks. "Pardon?"

"No congratulations?"

And she laughs then, bubbling up from deep in her chest, happy, because Sasuke is _just so predictable_. "You are such an egoist."

He smirks. "You like it."

Her spine is jelly. "I do."

Sasuke's lips dip into a frown.

Sakura tips her head, because she knows that look, and it's out of place—it's the look he gets when he's either overthinking something, or thinking about saying something that she's not particularly going to like.

She bites her lip and says "Honestly, though, I'm really happy for you. You'll like it."

He still doesn't say anything in reply.

"Sasuke?"

"We shouldn't have stopped."

And then she can't breathe. "_What?_!" she chokes out.

He's staring at a spot on the table. He doesn't look her in the eye.

"You and me," he says. "We shouldn't have stopped, we had something good and I... fucked it up. We should have kept us together. _I_ should have kept us together."

Sakura fights not to dig her nails into her palms.

For a long time, they are both quiet.

Finally, she sighs. It comes out more tired and more sad than she would have liked.

"Yeah," she replies. "Maybe you should have."

He doesn't have anything to say to that.

They sit in silence for a long time again.

(It is so very reminiscent of the last time they saw each other that Sakura nearly cries. It wasn't supposed to go like this, but it did and it does, and she can't control it. She probably shouldn't have even tried in the first. She breathes slow.)

Sakura's fingers close around the worn straps of her purse. "I should go. Tsunade is probably freaking out, I've been gone way longer than I said I would be."

Sasuke nods once.

It's good that he knows he's fucked up.

She's wanted him to know that for so long.

Her keys clink in her bag as she stands. Sasuke doesn't look at her. Everything hurts, because this is stupid—god, this is so, so stupid. They're not supposed to be like this.

But she figures they both probably deserve it.

She's nearly at the door when she pauses to look around. "Hey, Sasuke," she calls.

His head jerks up. He stares at her, unblinking, stone-cold beautiful. He always was like that, she reflects.

"See you around," she smiles.

And then she disappears out the door into Konoha's late-day furnace heat, and she disappears.

—

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_fin_.

**notes3**: my life in a paper cup—how about some change? (read: reviews would be really cool!)


	43. in the house of flies

**disclaimer**: disclaimed.  
**dedication**: to rainy days and instrumental piano tracks.  
**notes**: and then this happened?  
**notes2**: un-beta'd, but what the fuck ever, it is fucking 1:35AM, I dare you to judge me.

**title**: in the house of flies  
**summary**: She is the most dangerous creature in the whole world. — Sasuke/Sakura; 43/5o.

—

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She leaves the house in four-inch heels, a red coat, and a designer bag that costs more than most people make in a month. Her shoes click against the pavement as she unlocks her car, and she catches a glimpse of herself in the window.

She pauses to study herself.

She is beautiful.

There is no denying that. She is beautiful, hair in perfect wispy curls around her face; her eyes are green and wide and darkly rimmed with lashes so long that she can feel them bat against her cheeks when she blinks. Her earrings are pearls, and they glint dimly in the reflection. She is pale and perfect and still as a porcelain doll.

Beautiful, to be sure.

She's also never looked more like her mother.

Sakura feels sick to her stomach.

She slips into the car, and slams the door behind her. She has no desire to dwell on the resemblance. She loves her mother, but—

The garage rumbles as the door pulls up.

Sakura speeds out without another look behind her.

—but _God_, she hates this place. And she knows exactly how this is going to go: knows exactly where she's going to pick up an obscenely expensive coffee, knows that the cashier is going to smile at her and her bag and the particular posture that people with more money than could be spent in three lifetimes have, and Sakura knows—she just _knows_—that she's going to hate the whole thing.

Because, hell, Sakura hates a lot of things, these days.

The streetlamps blur past. She dodges around the other cars on the road, foot crunched down on the clutch as she changes gears. The music blares loud, but she turns it up to deafen the sound of wind against metal. Then sun's not even fully set and the sky's gone streaky blue-green-purple-gold and Sakura drives too fast just because she can.

Her father taught her to drive stick.

She doesn't miss him at all.

She floors it anyway.

The turn-off to the city limit is just to her left, and Sakura aches for it. Freedom is just at her fingertips, and it turns to ash in her mouth. Her mother will never forgive her if she misses another one of these things.

Sakura forces her hands not to turn an inch, and she drives on.

—

It's a theater. It's a theater full of old men, old money, and their wives. It's a theater full of old men, old money, their wives, and their _sons_.

_Typical_.

She searches the room for her mother—the woman's not hard to find, a cutting figure in luxurious white dress pants and champagne-coloured shoes, holding a glass of bubbly and laughing in a group of men. People are drawn to her mother, Sakura knows, drawn to her in a way that she wouldn't imitate even if she could.

Sakura clenches her fists and thinks of anatomy, of bones and blood and capillaries and lungs and the heart. She thinks of studying, piles of books, the sharp smell of antiseptic harsh in her nose. She thinks of pure white blankness, and she tries to calm herself down.

It doesn't work as well as she'd hoped.

And that's when she knows the night is already shot, and she might as well get used to it.

Sakura brushes her hair away from her eyes and sighs. She already knows how this is going to go. Once her mother finds out she's here—and her mother always, _always_ finds out—the woman's going to foist any single man in the area at her, just to see if there'd be sparks.

Sometimes Sakura thinks her mother gets a sick kick out of watching her squirm.

Her heels click against the marble, click like the clicked in the garage and God, Sakura can only dream about being at home. Her hands clench around a pilfered pair of champagne flutes and she tips her head back to drain them both.

This whole night is a lost cause.

Sloppy drunk looks like the least painful option.

"Hello, Mother," she says.

Haruno Mebuki is a beautiful woman—Sakura knows where she gets her looks, and it isn't from her father. She drips diamonds and a thin veneer of patience. Her hair is blonde and tucked out of the way, probably styled for just this occasion—Sakura wouldn't doubt it, and she mentally lets out a snort of high-pitched derision.

"Gentlemen," Sakura's mother says. Her smile is a shark's, dangerous and hungry. "This is my daughter. Say, _hello_, Sakura."

"Hello," she says on cue.

They all eye her, suddenly interested. She is a novelty, all strawberry hair so bright it might as well be bubblegum pink and those _eyes_, _look at her eyes, such a lovely colour_, guileless and innocent and when she's in white she could be an angel but tonight she wears black just to spite them all. The company title will be hers when she turns twenty-one, and they know it, and she knows it, and the whole _room_ knows it. And she is the most eligible person in this room, because money breeds money, and God, Sakura _hates it all_.

She counts backwards from twenty-one to zero and wants to vomit.

Her mother turns away for just a moment; and Sakura thinks hard about medical school. She could take a scalpel to any of these men and split them open and see inside—

She cuts that thought off before it goes any farther.

Alcohol always makes her morbid.

And this is how she meets Uchiha Sasuke again for the first time since school, standing behind her mother in the incandescent light of the pre-show party, holding a flute of champagne that's already gone straight to her head. Her mother is babbling to an older man, and smirking, and smirking, and smirking.

There is a business merger in the works, here.

"Sakura, this is Fugaku-san, and his son. Have you met—?"

"No," Sakura says. Her tone is clipped, colder than ice, and she thinks that if she breathed out, the floor would turn to frost beneath her feet. "I haven't."

"Sasuke, come introduce yourself," the man hisses over his shoulder. The man—boy, he can't be much older than she is, and Sakura is nineteen if she's a day, and she's still as much a child as she was the day she was born—_sulks_ towards them. It's the only way to describe the slope of his shoulders and the movements like dragging his heels.

Sakura can see her mother's disapproval out of the corner of her eye.

She takes meticulous mental notes so that she can reproduce the behaviour _next_ time. It would be crude to imitate him now, but she has cigarettes and three packs of gum in her purse, and she can do it later.

"Uchiha Sasuke," he grumbles.

He looks like he wants to be here even less than she does.

But that's not really possible, so Sakura smiles at him with her teeth, sharp and shark-like as her mother's.

(She remembers right then why she wanted to be sick in the first place.)

"Hi," she says. "It's been a while."

He meets her gaze, then, and Sakura pretends that it does not send her heart into stasis in her chest for a sheer moment. That's not healthy—hearts are not supposed to _do_ things like that, it's not romantic or good or _anything_.

She wonders distantly if maybe she should abscond to the hospital. It'd be more interesting than this place, anyway.

He is dark and he is beautiful and Sakura hates, hates, _hates_ that word, hates to apply it to someone else because it hurts, it does, it hurts and it peels away the parts of people that are human.

She wonders what would happen if she punched him in the face.

She wonders what it would feel like to have his blood on her fist.

They study each other for what seems like a long, long time, but is probably less than a full minute. Their parents talk loudly over their heads, like this is a good thing, like they're somehow friends out of the blue because they're there in their shared misery.

She feels like she might have known him in another life. There's something strangely fragile and strangely familiar about him, because she knows him, yeah, she does—they went to school together. They did, because she knows the line of his nose and the darkness in his eyes. They did, because she thinks she might have once kissed him, but she doesn't particularly remember the details. It's been a long time.

And it's a close thing. Even so, friendship is off the table.

Because they're not.

They're not friends at all.

She only knows his name and that he's probably richer than she is, and for some reason, she can't stand the sight of him anymore. Sakura tosses her hair over her shoulder, and, without looking in his direction again, excuses herself to retch into the toilet.

She washes her face, and then she slips out the back when no one is looking.

(She manages to down another four glasses of champagne on the way out. This night could be worse, she thinks.)

The lighter sparks under her hand and she drags in on the cigarette—it's Karin's pack of cancer sticks, Karin's bad habit, and somehow she's dragged Ino—and, through Ino, Sakura—into it, too.

Sakura thinks of her cousin and her best friend, fond, and pulls on the cigarette in their honour.

The door squeaks when it opens. Sakura doesn't bother looking around.

"Did you seriously follow me out here?" she asks. The smoke curls around her cheekbones, wisps of grey pale as her hair in the orange glare of the streetlamp. She ashes it, and the glows as it falls towards the ground stories below.

"They sent me looking," he mutters.

And now Sakura does turn around. She lifts a pale eyebrow in his direction.

She is the most dangerous creature in the whole world. She would split him end to end, and she wonders if they both don't already know it. Sasuke looks at her—just looks, like this is simple or ordinary or normal, but it's not because no one follows her when she leaves, that's the _point_—and she knows that he's thinking about the people inside, the itch to break and run.

She likes him a little more, after that.

But not enough to make this comfortable.

"That's nice," she says, and turns back to the metal bar that keeps her from tipping over the edge of the building and going _splat_ against the pavement. She drags smoke into her lungs. It burns all the way down.

She can feel him staring at the back of her neck. The awareness of it prickles, but she doesn't say anything so he doesn't say anything so no one says anything at all.

Sakura expects him to leave.

He doesn't.

Instead, he stations himself beside her. He is dark grace made tangible, and Sakura wonders if touching him would be like trying to catch smoke. She thinks it on the exhale, too, just as smoke leaves her nose, and it's a twisted mirror of what it should be.

She likes it more than she should.

Sakura doesn't realize she's grinning until he says "That's a filthy habit."

"Isn't it just?" she says with relish. She blows smoke at him, and she barely even knows his name. "Blame my cousin. Everything's her fault, anyway."

This is sort of true.

"They told me about you," he says.

"Oh?" Sakura asks. She narrows her eyes and fixes her gaze on the sky far in the distance. The last dregs of sunset skitter across the sky, and it's like paint in the back of her skull, rainbow finger paints that she understood as a child but could never touch anymore. "What'd they tell you? That I'm wild? Or that marrying me is a good way to secure the future of your company?"

"Neither," he says. His lips barely move.

"Then what _did_ they say?"

She knows it can't have been anything nice. For some reason, she likes that he must not have an illusion of her. There aren't a lot of people who can look at her and get the right impression—they all think she's an airhead. She's not. She flicks the cigarette butt away. It drops, a flare of bright red against the gathering dark.

"That you outsmarted three Harvard prospects."

Sakura snorts. "They didn't leave out the part where I'd already had a bottle of wine and three glasses of champagne, did they? Ooh, my mother was so _mad_, it was the greatest thing—"

He looks down at her. "You're open."

She shrugs. "I'm drunk. What does it matter?"

Sasuke looks at her. His gaze is intense on her face, and Sakura breaks the contact because it's uncomfortable, because she doesn't know him, because she—

Whatever.

She doesn't care, anyway.

"So why'd you actually come out after me, huh?" she asks.

"I said—"

"Don't give me that," Sakura scoffs. The alcohol's gotten to her, morbidity, and she would count the stars to rend the sky open and let it bleed, leave it guts out across the floor, but she's got some restraint.

Plus, Sasuke's almost a stranger.

She's been worse than this, but not by much. Sakura looks for truth in the cold metal beneath her hands but can't find it and waits for his answer.

He shrugs a little and stuffs his hands into his pockets.

"That is a shit answer," she tells him. She doesn't slur at all, and she's almost proud of herself. Sloppy drunk is everything she hates about herself, to be honest.

"Does it matter?"

"Of course it does."

"Sakura," he says.

"Oh my god, you're exactly like everyone else, aren't you? I actually thought—well, character judgement isn't—whatever, I'm drunk."

She sways on the spot a little. The world seems to shiver around her, and yeah, she's probably had three drinks too many, and maybe that cigarette was a bad idea. This is going to be fun. Beautiful? What the fuck did that mean, again?

"Uh," he says.

"I think I'm going to be sick," she informs him cheerfully.

"Oh, fuck—"

She vomits over the edge of the building.

He's gone when she looks up.

Sakura laughs, bitter, and sinks to her knees.

_Well_, she thinks hazily, _he won't be coming back_.

She rests her forehead against the metal for a long time, trying to catch her breath. Everything hurts. She hates vomiting as much as she hates this whole thing. She's on her knees, and she stays that way until the door creaks again.

"I brought water."

"I hate you," Sakura says.

"That's good. Get up."

He sounds cheerful. Sakura swears to herself that she is going to break his nose. He's stopped her breath and her vomiting and this is not how this is supposed to work.

She shoves herself away from the ground.

Sasuke hand on her wrist steadies her.

"Getting home is going to be a bitch," Sakura sighs. There is still bile in her mouth. She spits twice, and he doesn't even blink. She gulps the water he offers, spits again, and feels a little better.

He practically drags her down to the parkade. They slink through the party like thieves in the night, silent, and Sakura grabs her coat and her purse and keys, and she's pretty sure that the porter thinks she's sneaking out to get laid.

(It couldn't be further from the truth, and she laughs to herself, a little hysteric, a lot still drunk.)

"Give me your keys," Sasuke says.

"Fuck you," she replies, cheerful.

He takes them, anyway.

She will never him how grateful she is. The fucked up part is that yeah, he _is_ a stranger in a way, but Sakura is past the point of caring. If he decides to kidnap her, she's got a gun in the glove compartment, and she can break his nose like she thought about earlier.

The trust is a strange thing.

(It's been a long time since anyone brought her water after she'd been sick. It's been longer since someone drove her home. She doesn't deal in shenanigans like this. Her mother is going to be scandalized. The victory is already thick on Sakura's tongue.)

"Do you even know where I live?" Sakura asks.

"No," Sasuke says wryly. "Do you care?"

Sakura tips her head back against the seat. The leather interior is plush to the touch. Her mother paid too much for this car, and Sakura is nothing but a spoiled little rich girl only she's actually got a brain and not fluff so that's something although she's not quite sure what. It's pretty messed up, actually.

"Not particularly," she says, considering.

Sasuke snorts.

And she thinks: _everything makes sense_.

It's the strangest realization she's ever had.

She glances at him out of the corner of her eye. His face is distilled into something less than human in the glare of the parkade's light, and again, she likes it too much.

Humanity is overrated, and she's at the point of no improvement.

Sakura reaches across the divide between them, and it's a gulf so huge she's surprised that her arm reaches across it. It feels like so, so long. She pokes him once, and Sasuke glances at her.

"What?"

Sakura smiles honestly for the first time all night. It's dumb, and her teeth are still sharp and scalpel-like, and she still doesn't know him. But he's turned his signal on, and the edge of the city is right there, _right there_, and oh God, he's going to turn and life shoots through Sakura.

She thinks that running away might be everything she's ever wanted.

"Thanks," she says.

Sasuke's eyes return to the road.

"No problem," he says.

Sakura settles back against the seat. She watches the ground fly away beneath them, can almost feel Sasuke`s foot against the gas. They've got a full tank and all night, and maybe when she wakes up she won't hate herself so much.

Only maybe.

It's better than nothing.

Sakura takes a deep breath, and closes her eyes.

—

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_fin_.


	44. and let the sunrise turn me to gold

**disclaimer**: disclaimed.  
**dedication**: les and sonya and emily, forever and for always.  
**notes**: because. just because. I just like Karin, okay.

**title**: and let the sunrise turn me to gold  
**summary**: So how about we become monsters together? — Sasuke/Sakura, Karin; 44/5o.

—

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.

"I—I can't keep this up," Karin muttered.

There was blood and fresh bite marks all down her arms, and Sakura could tell that the girl was exhausted.

"Neither can I," Sakura replied.

"This is hell," Karin said, and then slumped back away from the body lying prone in front of her. The marks on her arms from his teeth bled sluggishly and Sakura watched her wipe it away with a tired sort of grace. She rubbed her hands down her face. It left streaky marks of bright red down her cheeks. "This is goddamn hell."

Sakura slid down next to her, panting. She ran her fingers through sweat-sticky hair, fingers flexing uncontrollably 'til she cracked all her knuckles. The snaps sent shocks through them both, and they looked at each other for only a second.

"Sasuke did this, you know," Karin said, quiet.

"I know," Sakura said. Her eyes were flinty chips of ice as she looked around the healer's tent. Yes, this was Sasuke's fault, Sasuke's fault, always, always Sasuke's fault. No one could take that back, no one could change it.

"What are we gonna do?" Karin sighed.

Sakura didn't say anything, for a moment. When had it become _we_? When had Karin become a person she could trust? When had that happened?

Probably when Naruto died, she thought. When Ino took a kunai to the gut and Sakura was too far away to help. When Kakashi-sensei told her that necessity made strange friends. That was when it had become _we_.

She dropped her head to Karin's shoulder. "We're not gonna do anything. I think… Karin, we need to get the civilians out. The rest of them."

"We need to stop him," Karin said, gentle.

"No," Sakura said. "_I_ need to stop him. I should have done it a long time ago."

"Before it ever got this far, huh?"

"I thought you'd be mad," Sakura said into her shoulder.

"Why would I be mad?" Karin asked as tilted her head back against the canvas of the tent wall. There was a stretch beneath her muscles; Sakura could feel it, undulation as her companion shifted.

"Because he tried to kill you. I thought you'd want to return the favour."

"Hell no," Karin laughed, harsh and sharp. The sound grated against Sakura's eardrums. "I hate him. I'm staying far the fuck away. Besides—" she paused, and glanced down at the top of Sakura's head "—you two have history. Makes me sick, just so you know."

"That we have history?"

"Ew, no," Karin wrinkled her nose. "That makes me sound like a jealous whore. No, definitely not that you have history."

"Then what?" Sakura asked.

"That you still think he's worth saving."

There was a sort of finality to the statement. Neither girl moved, and they sat together as one organism, breathing through the same lungs for a little while. In another life, Sakura thought, they might have been sisters. They certainly had enough in common.

"It's a little fucked up, isn't it?" Sakura chuckled. It came out more like gurgling, an ugly, shaken sound.

Karin smiled with her teeth. "Of course it is. He doesn't deserve you."

"Just, Karin—if you find anyone alive—" Sakura started.

"Don't worry. I know what to do. Now get gone, go kill Romeo. Someone has to do it," Karin said.

Sakura's mouth turned to a tight white line, gone bloodless but fierce. She nodded only once, jerky, but she didn't move. "Karin?"

"Hm?"

"What happens if I die?"

"If you die, we all die."

"Thought so. I should go, huh?"

"Yeah, probably," Karin said. But instead, she laced her fingers through Sakura's, and for a little while they held hands like little girls, when flowers and sunlight were good things to never be trampled. And Sakura thought of Ino and how she'd always been there and now she wasn't, and how maybe Karin had never had a childhood at all.

"Don't die, okay?"

"Don't worry," Sakura said, and grinned weakly out of the corner of her mouth. "I won't."

—

Sakura walked slowly.

She thought she had the right, she supposed; she was walking to her death, most likely, and any extra time was extra time to live and breathe and feel. The dark press of Sasuke's chakra was soaking into her already, sinking down past her skin and into her bones to snake through her bloodstream like so many terrible thoughts and she had to wonder what in the world had happened to him.

Somewhere along the way he had become someone she didn't know, and Karin was right—he didn't deserve her, not now, maybe not ever. If he was someone different, then maybe that was a possibility, but, well, he wasn't.

Sasuke-kun was Sasuke-kun, after all.

"Sakura."

Sakura looked up. There he was. She looked for Ino's courage and Karin's sarcasm and Hinata's determination and Tenten's strength, but found only her own cowardice.

"I thought you would give me more time," she told him.

It was five hours after midnight. Pale grey dawn was making its way across the sky, and she could make out the stark spinning of his Sharingan. There was a bloody nightmare writ across his hands.

He was wearing Naruto's necklace.

Sakura's vision went black then red, and the loathing rose fast as bile in her throat. She fought not to retch to the side.

"Really?" she asked. "_Really_? Naruto's necklace? You sick fuck."

Even shadowed, she could see his hand twitch upwards for the tiniest sliver of a second, like he was going to reach for the blue crystal hanging from his throat, like he was going to touch it and Sakura hated, hated, _hated_ him in that moment. She hated him because it was his fault this war had gone on so long, his fault her two best friends were dead, his fault, _his fault_. It rolled across her tongue, the same thick metallic tang as blood flavoured with something jagged and bitter—that was how hatred tasted. Bitter and bloody was hatred, and it nearly made her retch again.

She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. It came away dry—no blood, no vomit. Good. She hadn't completely lost her shit, then.

"Hn."

Sakura looked at him again, and tipped her head just a little. "You didn't even leave enough of his body for us to give him a proper funeral."

"No," he said, "I didn't."

There was something akin to pride in his voice. Sakura clenched her fists very, very tightly. If she wasn't careful, she was going to make herself bleed.

Enough blood had been spilled this night, she thought.

(But not quite enough.)

"Monster," she said.

He seemed to consider her for a moment. "That's a new one, Sakura."

She really didn't like the way he said her name, and she shook her head. "No, it's not. Everyone calls you a monster, Sasuke. You destroyed an entire village—they might not ever recover."

"That was the point," Sasuke said quietly.

Sakura's lips stretched widely across her face until she was smiling (the same way Karin always did, smiling needle-point with her teeth like she wanted to bite a person's throat out), and she just shook her head.

"Monster," she said again, still beaming. It was like she couldn't stop; she'd crossed something, coming here, and now smiling at him? It was vicious tenderness, this sick thing between them that for a long time had eaten away at her soul; she had to wonder if it did the same to him, but probably not.

"I mean it's a new one from _you_," he said.

"As if that somehow makes a difference," said Sakura. Her hand drifted down to the kunai holster at her thigh, and she hooked a finger through a ring. She had no doubt he'd seen her every movement, analyzed, and had already thought of six different ways to kill her, all of which were equally efficient. That was just how Sasuke worked.

He didn't say anything again.

Sakura's grin widened. "I thought not."

They stared at each other for a long time.

"I'm going to kill you tonight," Sakura said. "I probably should have done it a long ago."

"You can try," Sasuke replied.

And she knew he was thinking of all the times she'd needed to be saved. But goddamn, he'd never been there when she'd done the saving—never been there when she saved Chiyo-baa, never there when she pulled the poison out of Kankurou, never there when—

Whatever.

Who cared.

She was so done with this whole thing. Sakura spun the kunai around and around her finger with long-practised ease just as the sun began to peak over the horizon.

"I have people to get back to," she said. "Can we make this quick?"

"And _I'm_ the monster, Sakura?"

"Well," she said slowly, tipping her head back and forth, "Like I said. You destroyed an entire village. And you killed—" she had to pause and chuckle for a minute to stop herself from screaming "—my best friend… so… Yeah, yeah, that does kind of make you a monster."

Sakura licked her lips. "But you know what, Sasuke? I'm gonna be a monster, too. Because I'm going to kill you, and I'm not going to feel anything at all."

"Really," he said."

"Really, really," she replied, smiling again. "So how about we become monsters together?"

He nodded very, very slowly.

The morning sun burst across the horizon, and caught along the edge of Sakura's kunai. The reflection was brilliant and dazzled them both, but they were already moving. The sunrise was burnished red and furious under the violent clang of metal against metal.

They hit the ground running, and Sakura's left arm was already useless—he'd shattered the bones in her fist, and she didn't have the time to not the chakra to expend on healing them. She would deal.

And they fought and fought and fought—the ground soaked up their combined blood and sweat and misery, and Sakura thought that maybe this was how it was always going to end.

Maybe they all should have known.

Without Naruto there to save them, they were little more than a puzzle missing pieces.

And it was time to end that.

Sakura slammed her fist into his nose. His blood trickled past her fingers, and they dropped. The press of his katana dug into her side, and the pain was a fierce, fiery thing. Probably poison. She held her kunai to his throat, knees splayed across his hips, and suddenly she was twelve and giggling at him for the first time.

God, how she had loved him.

She pressed the kunai deeper. A thin red line appeared along his throat.

"Monsters, yet?" she asked, soft as anything at all. "Are we monsters, now?"

"We've always _been_ monsters, Sakura," Sasuke said.

And she thought of twelve-year-olds on battlefields and broken fingers and the psychological torture she had always known Ino could inflict on someone had she wanted. She thought of Tsunade-shishou, drunk and crying after the news of Jiraiya's death reached them. Hinata with a sword through her stomach. Naruto, with his wide eyes and his forever-hope that things could be better one day and the fact that there was _nothing left of him_.

And Sakura thought _monsters, all of us, yes, always_.

And this was Sasuke—bloody and beautiful and tragic and Sasuke. With her kunai still pressed to his neck and his katana still digging into her side, Sakura bent and pressed her forehead to his and closed her eyes.

"I'm going kill you," she murmured.

"You won't."

"How do you know?"

"Monsters," he shrugged underneath her hands.

The katana dropped away and so did the pain, and Sasuke's hands came up to tangle through her hair. He pulled her down until the kunai cut through both their skin, and he bit her lips until she bled. The slide of their lips together was grisly and raw, sticky with both their blood and grime.

And they'd always been this, in love with the way they could have been.

"I'm sorry," Sakura breathed.

"I'm not," Sasuke said. "Glad it was you."

"There's no one else, Sasuke," she shook her head. They were still pressed very close together, clinging to the dregs of the past. "There's only me left, now."

"Hn," Sasuke kissed her again.

"I still love you," she laughed into his mouth, a little hysteric, a little horrified, a little honest. Team Seven was disappearing before her very eyes, and she was the one ending it. There was something fitting about that.

"I know. Do it, Sakura."

"Okay," she said.

He closed his eyes.

Lightning-quick, she shoved the kunai down. She knew what happened next. There was blood everywhere. His, hers—but mostly his. The heat left his body as she held him, and she held him for a long time after he was cold as stone and the light had left his eyes. Sakura brushed his bangs away from his forehead and left one more kiss there, to mark him, to keep something that no one else would understand.

From his neck, she took Naruto's necklace. The crystal was cool and blue in her hands, and she thought she understood why Sasuke had taken it in the first place.

She slung it around her neck. She tucked it beneath her shirt. It settled cold as ice between her breasts, still slick with blood, and Sakura pushed herself to her knees. She slid the kunai that had killed him back into its holster.

She was never going to use it again.

And finally, she stood.

The wind caught her hair, carnage and relief on the breeze. Sakura wrapped her arms around herself, and as she walked away, she let the sunrise turn her to gold.

—

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_fin_.

**notes2**: leave a review, yeah? I'd like to know if I haven't lost my touch.


	45. the device has been modified

**disclaimer**: disclaimed.  
**dedication**: to annie, for knocking this bitch over the 1000 review mark. :)  
**notes**: sometimes I get dumb images in my head and write whole fics around them.

**title**: the device has been modified  
**summary**: It's not brave. It's murder. — Sasuke/Sakura; 45/5o.

—

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"Oh, look. He's waking up."

Sasuke came around slowly. The world was a fuzzy blur around him for a second, until things settled, and he found a girl with curious, too-bright-to-be-real green eyes trained down at him. She was _staring_, the sort of staring at that was usually considered rude.

"You have pink hair," were the first words that came out of his mouth.

She cocked her head at him, inquisitive as a little cat, and she bent a little closer. "That's not on the standard list of responses. You're—ooh, you're _different_, aren't you? This is going to be _fun_!"

"You have _pink hair_," Sasuke said again, and lurched upwards to catch at her wrist. She slid out of his grip, liquid, but not before he'd touched her skin. Only it wasn't skin, it was flesh-coloured porcelain, and he was going to be sick.

"I do have pink hair," she replied. She looped a strand of it around her finger, and Sasuke wondered how they'd built her so seamlessly. She looked _human_. None of the other bots did. "I thought we established that? They said you were smart. I don't want to have to send you back. That would be a pity."

Sasuke didn't have a thing to say to that. He felt like one of his brother's broken bots, stuck on repeat, spouting the same thing over and over until Itachi worked his magic and they were back to normal.

The only thing he could think was that she had pink hair, and she wasn't _natural_. Not the colour of her hair, not the colour of her eyes, and not the texture of her skin—she wasn't natural at all.

He was strangely fascinated.

"What _are_ you?"

"Standard question. That's disappointing. I'm Sakura," she said.

"Not who," Sasuke said. "_What_."

"…Not standard, then. I am your guide. Can you stand?"

"Hn," Sasuke snorted. She'd avoided the question twice. She didn't want to answer it, clearly, and he wasn't going to press. "How do I get out?"

"You don't," she said.

"_What_—?"

"Well, not until the specimen has finished the tests," she amended. "We should get on that, we're running late as it is."

"Hn."

Her eyes took on a glazed sheen, the click-clack of gears underneath her porcelain skin whirring into motion. Her voice came out automated when she spoke. "Hello, and welcome to the Enrichment Center. We are now ready to begin the tests proper."

She stood stock still for a moment, and then she came back to herself. Sakura bent her head, tucked short gossamer strands of pink out of her face, her perfect lips bending into something that was too bitter to be a smile.

"Sorry," she said. "There were some things they had to program in."

Sasuke looked at her out of the corner of his eye, and then swung his legs off the starkly cold metal block. He had no idea where he was. He wasn't about to ask. He had a dark feeling that it was on her _list_, and he wanted nothing to do with _that_.

He just wanted out, and if that meant playing her little game…

Sasuke had always been good at winning games.

"Choose your weapon," she said, and tipped her head at a metal sheet that jutted from the wall, covered all over with a mash-mash of weapons left all higgledy-piggledy in a pile.

He reached for the first big gun he could see.

(He swiped a jagged-looking knife as an after-thought, and slipped it into his back pocket. At least they'd left him his clothes. The denim was worn soft from over-long wear, shiny along the creases where the oil had stained through.)

"Do I get a training run?" Sasuke asked, almost rhetoric.

Sakura blinked at him.

"Just don't die," she said. "That's the point of the experiment."

And then she whirled, clipboard in hand. The flare of her white coat stark against the grey of the background, and Sasuke followed her without a thought.

He didn't trust her at all.

Sakura reached forward, and the well fell sleekly away beneath her fingertips. Sasuke could see nothing but a long dark hallway, and she moved out of the way. Her face was a waxy blur.

"I would run, if I were you."

Sasuke didn't look at her as she went, but he could feel her staying close behind. She was like a shadow, clinging close and claustrophobic, and he could feel her brushing against him every now and again.

He ignored it, just like everything else.

The monsters came, then.

Wretched things, but Sasuke blew through them like a natural. Drenched in black rotting squelch, he looked back at Sakura. She was perfectly clean, standing at the far end of the hall already.

"…Hn," Sasuke shoved a hand in his pocket, fingers closing around the wooden handle of the still-sheathed knife.

"Oh," Sakura called, "don't worry about me! They don't mind me."

Sasuke walked the rest of the hallway slowly, hand still in his pocket. She grinned brightly at him, head tilted at a too-strange angle and her chin jut out. "Really, don't worry about me."

"Why would I?"

Sakura laughed, high-pitched and a little off-kilter. "Because you kept looking over your shoulder at me. Hero-complex? They didn't tell me that. They never tell me anything."

Sasuke shook his head at her. "Don't get in the way."

"You're the test subject, not me. They don't care about me; they've already run me through this, lots of time. I'm just—" she sort of grinned "—the guide."

She flicked her hair, and motioned towards the door. "The next test is harder. Subject passed level Zero."

"Zero is a level?"

Sakura shrugged. "If you can't make it through this, you're not worth the time, and we'd have to find another. That was your _training_ level. You passed."

She touched the wall again, and it melted away as much as the first one had.

This time, Sasuke did not hesitate.

He strode through the opening, and into the darkness.

—

She laughed, sometimes.

More often, she didn't.

Sasuke never watched her break, but there were times when she did odd things—when she went stock still and started to shake, and she'd press herself up against the wall as though she was trying to sink into them, merge herself inside.

Sasuke stayed close to her, those times, as something as easy as comfort. Sometimes it brought her back. Sometimes it didn't, and her skin—her porcelain—shook so hard she might have shattered into pieces all over the floor, and Sasuke was left to sit awkwardly at her side after the monsters had all gone, and they waited the aftermath out together.

Afterwards, she would smile.

"Programming," she said softly. "I told you right at the start."

"…Why?" he asked.

She shrugged. "There were things about the old me that they didn't like."

"The old you?"

Her smile turned waxy around the edges. "Don't worry about it. I'm better now."

_Better_ could have meant a lot of things. Sasuke knew that, but her face had turned to stone, perfectly blank, and there was nothing there at all. He was getting nothing else out of her, for now. He stood, and she dragged herself up the wall—Sasuke thought that if she had blood, it all would have drained away from her face. She looked weak

Sasuke looked away, because it made something churn in his stomach to see her like that.

She sagged again.

"A minute, I need a—"

She slumped to the ground again. The sound of porcelain against concrete was a horrible cracking in his ears, her wrists crackling as they hit the floor. She jerked violently, and something black and slick bubbled at her lips—oil, it was oil, was that her _blood_, was she _dying_—? Sasuke didn't want to touch her.

A great shudder passed through her, and she went still.

Sasuke stared down, and watched her eyes open.

"Wh-where am I?" she asked. "Who are you?"

He watched as she felt around. There was panic in her throat—it was the most human emotion he'd seen out of her, yet, the only one that didn't seem unnatural. Her fingers were digging into the floor, and he could hear them cracking.

Sasuke didn't think she could feel it.

"Sakura," he said quietly, "it's me."

"How do you know my _name?_!" she nearly shrieked at him. There was black all down her chin, and she wiped it away. Her fingers slowed, and she pulled her hand away from her face to look down. Her eyes went wide and scared.

"Oh god," she said, "oh, oh my god, they actually—they—I—oh god, oh god—"

"Sakura," Sasuke said a little more forcefully. "Look at me."

"Who are you?" she asked again. Her hands still shook, but she folded them in her lap like Sasuke had seen her do so many times before.

"Sasuke," he said shortly.

"You? You're the one she—oh god, I'm sorry, I just, I haven't, this—oh god, god, god, what level are we on? I need to know, please, just, I need—"

"Sixty-three," he said quietly.

He'd never seen someone look so desperate or so close to completely crazed in his entire life. She couldn't stop trembling, couldn't stop moving her hands, couldn't stop touching the coldness that Sasuke knew that was her body.

She shook some more, and took a deep breath. Sasuke had never seen her do that before. she grabbed at his hands, covering him in slick black oil, and pulled him down to his knees.

She stared him in the eyes, and didn't look away for a second.

"Okay, okay, that's good, not too deep, okay, okay, okay, you need to listen to me very carefully, because when you get to—level seventy-eight, I think, I think, oh god, I don't even know. but— but—you need to tell her—me—her tell her to you want to go left, and you'll, well, you'll see, and I just—god, please, get me out of here—" she started.

Then she jerked again, jerked again, jerked again, and then went limp, eyes turned all glazed and clear as marbles.

She was still for only a moment.

Then she blinked.

"Sasuke? Why am I on the ground?"

Something very strange was going on her. He reached down to catch at her wrist, and he helped her up. She still shivered a little.

"…You fell," he said.

"I don't remember," she said, and then touched the black liquid on her lips. "I must have… hit my head…"

"Hn."

Sakura smiled out of the corner of her mouth. "So you. Are you ready to go?"

"Yeah," Sasuke nodded.

"Then down we go," Sakura replied. She walked the length of the room. The wall panel dissolved as always, and she tipped her head. "Please proceed."

Sasuke slid his hand into his pocket to curl around the knife once more. She was Sakura but not, and the girl who'd been sitting on the floor before, shaking like she couldn't stop and asking all those questions, the way she'd clung at him…

There was something very strange going on here.

He headed for the opening.

Her blood was still all over his hands. He rubbed them on his jeans as he went and left long streaky dark marks. He knew she was pretending not to notice.

It was _better_ that way.

—

They spiraled downwards and downwards, and Sasuke bled and Sakura-not-Sakura set him back in order every time.

"Level Seventy-Eight," she said. "Go."

Sasuke ripped through the _enrichment activity_ easy as a warm knife through butter.

Sakura made a note on her clipboard. "Fastest you've finished yet. You're getting better."

He didn't offer thanks.

She headed for the wall. "Ready?"

"I want to go left," Sasuke said.

"…Pardon?"

"Left," he said again, and pointed in that general direction. "That way."

She stared at her him for a long, long time.

And then:

"Fine. Sub-level Seventy-Eight."

Sasuke went straight past her, and didn't look her in the eyes. She'd taken on that glazed look that she got when the gears started to turn, and he didn't want to acknowledge what he'd done to send her into it in the first place.

_She's a machine_, he thought. _She is a __**machine**_. He had to repeat it in his head over and over for it to get through.

It didn't quite work.

Because the thing about Sakura was that she was a beautiful girl. Maybe the most beautiful girl Sasuke had ever seen. Maybe the most beautiful girl he ever would see. But she was a machine built out of porcelain and pre-programmed to be someone else entirely.

There was something underneath her skin that was eating away at her, and Sasuke needed to find out what it was.

Sub-level Seventy-Eight was something out of a science-fiction horror movie. Wires ran the length of the floor, and there was a movement like breathing from all around him. Pale, dime light came from the center of the room where the wires ran thick and curled around themselves, thick as the trunk of a tree.

A full-body shudder travelled down his spine. Those wires were protecting something.

Sasuke flicked the knife out.

He hadn't used it once, yet.

He would use it now.

"Well, you found her," Sakura said from behind him. "Congratulations."

"Her?"

"Sakura," she replied, and tipped her head. The wire-roots moved aside, and Sasuke looked over his shoulder for only a second. There was a girl hanging there, but the thing in front of him was still talking. "Her. Me. We're the same, you know. Only, well, no, we're not, she's—"

"Alive. Real," Sasuke supplied.

Her perfectly unreal smile widened. "Yes. Natural. Organic. So congratulations. No one else has ever found us. Was it worth it?"

"Why wouldn't it be?"

"I'll have to kill you, now."

Sasuke raised a single eyebrow at her in question.

"No one can know. They might take her away. The only rule you managed to break was my heart, and so now you have to die. I'm sorry." She wasn't sorry at all.

"So am I," Sasuke replied. He wasn't sorry, either. The knife in his grip shone. "She wants to get out."

"How do you know?" she asked.

"Hn."

She regarded him carefully. "It's not brave. It's murder."

"How?"

"I keep her alive. She keeps me alive. We're the same, don't you see? We can't—we _won't_—exist without each other. That was the point of that experiment."

Sasuke settled his shoulders.

"How do you know?"

She shrugged. Her shoulders her were sharp little points underneath her white lab coat, and she held his own gun up at him. Sasuke didn't know when she'd filched that off of him. He didn't _want_ to know.

Sakura took aim.

"I'm the end, you know," she said softly. "The last Level. If you kill me, well—you can leave. That's the point of the experiment, to find out if you're inhuman enough to destroy something not human but that looks human. Acts human. Some of them have even fallen in love with me—I'm not even alive! But what about you, Sasuke? Have _you_ fallen in love with me?"

She pulled the trigger before he had a chance to answer.

He wouldn't have, anyway.

He ducked just as the blast of energy ripped past where his head would have been. The blast hit the wires behind him. He looked around as the wires hissed, and began to try to repair themselves, but Sasuke saw something that shook him to the care.

There was a girl inside.

She was pale and she was small and she looked _exactly like Sakura_.

Another ball of energy went whizzing by.

Sasuke booked it for the wires, knife in hand.

(This level sucked _dick_.)

The whole place shuddered as he hacked away at the wires.

She—god, she looked like Sakura—made a tiny sound, and the world _lurched_.

Sasuke held on, and Sakura snarled from behind him.

"I'll kill you," she said. Her eyes were flickering between green and all the other colours of the rainbow. Shakily she pulled herself up from her knees, porcelain hands cracked and oily. She reached for him. "I'll _kill_ you!"

Sasuke paid her no attention, and continued to extricate the girl-who-looked-like-Sakura from the wires. She was limp against him, soft and pliant as he hauled her out. She was so pale.

But her breathing was even, and it seemed like she was just out cold.

"Stop," Sakura shrieked. "_Stop_! You'll destroy us!"

"Hn."

"We're all going to die," she said softly. She was shaking, cracking up, chips of her shell flaking away as Sasuke stood there with her twin in his arms, finally free of the wires. "Without us, the mainframe can't hold up—think of the science! I keep her _alive_! She's _mine_!"

Sasuke shrugged.

"…You don't even care, do you?"

Sasuke looked down at the girl in his arms. She was a mirror of the one staring at him with shifting eyes, but she was flesh, and she was warm, and her head lolled against his shoulder.

He looked back up at the girl who'd guided him this far.

He thought of her laugh.

"No, he said. "I don't."

The ceiling crumbled away, and there was light.

Sasuke followed it, and the whole place began to cave in. He held his quarry close, and ducked when pieces of the floors above them came crashing down. He followed it until they reached the surface.

The girl stirred, and he dropped to the ground, exhausted.

"Hey," Sasuke said quietly.

She made another sound, eyes opening. They were green. They looked at each other for a second.

"It's you," she said after a moment, quietly awed as she reached up touched the sides of his face. "You came."

"You sounded desperate," Sasuke said. The sunlight felt good after so many hours of darkness. In the light, the eldritch terrors were behind them and felt very far away. He cradled the girl with pink hair in her dirty shift close, careful not to break her at all.

Because she felt very, very breakable.

"You're Sakura, huh?"

"Yeah. Um, thank you," she said, "for getting me out of there."

"How long?" he asked.

"Pardon?"

This reply shook him, and he thought about Not-Sakura. She'd said _pardon_ in the exactly same way. It chilled him to his bones.

"How long were you in there?"

"Oh," she shrugged a little. The movement seemed to take what little energy she had. "I don't know. A long time."

Sasuke wasn't going to push. She'd curled in on herself with her pink head against his chest, and he wasn't about to upset her any more. He set his face to something blank and neutral. She was a fragile thing, and she didn't have anywhere to go.

He slipped his arms around her, and picked her up. "Let's go home."

"I don't have a home," she said, and tucked her face into his throat. Sasuke had never loved anyone—and this wasn't love, either. This was pity. He just needed to get her somewhere safe.

"Neither do I," he said.

Sakura went still. "Can we… make a home… together? Maybe?"

Sasuke smirked. "That was kind of the idea, Sakura."

She smiled, then. It was real and natural and quirky, curling up a little farther to the right than it did on the left, and her lips were a little too thin. It was imperfect, and she was human, human, all human and all warm and all _human_.

Sasuke's breath caught in his throat, a little.

Sakura pulled herself up, and pressed her mouth to his jawline. "Is that… okay?"

Sasuke tucked her face back into his throat. He almost kissed the top of her head to quiet her. "Don't worry," he said into her ear. "It's fine."

And he carried her from that dark place, broken and tired, never to return.

—

Somewhere far below them, a beautiful android lay crushed under the remains of the lab. Her eyes flickered, and she shivered as she woke.

Her perfect lips broke into a smile.

"Thank you for participating in this _computer-generated_ _Enrichment Activity_. Goodbye."

Silence.

Silence.

Silence.

"Are you still there?"

—

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_fin_.

**notes2**: I love sci-fi. **  
notes3**: someone make me stop.


	46. nerve endings

**disclaimer**: disclaimed.  
**dedication**: to les, to chloe, to sonya, to emily. you're my manic pixie dream girls, and I love you so, so, so much.  
**notes**: I guess this is a continuation of _in the house of flies_, but I don't even know. it might not make a lot of sense, but then again, I don't make a lot of sense, so it's okay.

**title**: nerve endings (the manic pixie dream girl remix)  
**summary**: Or, that time two rich kids tried running away together and accidentally fell in love. — Sasuke/Sakura; 46/5o.

—

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She was insane, that morning.

Up before the sun, and she was tripping towards the door with make-up smeared red-rimmed holes for eyes. Sakura ran her fingers through her hair, from pink roots to ragged pink tips, and the dark loose straps of her tank top slipped down her shoulders as she moved through the tiny hostel room.

They were in the middle of fucking nowhere, and Sasuke watched the line of her back from the bed. She was restless, as though her bones had got too big for her skin and she paced and stretched and cringed like a rat in a trap.

"Not here, not here, not _here_—where even can we _go_?" she asked, but it was more desperate and more to herself than to anything else. She didn't look at him as she spoke, stumbling over her words and her heels.

Sakura was so out of place in this dingy little motel, tottering on high heels and obscenely expensive clothes, he nearly had to laugh. But her eyes were a little mad, and he thought maybe it was better that he didn't.

"We haven't run out of gas, yet," he said quietly. "We could keep going."

"I know, I know, _I know_," she said, and went to the window to press her fingers against the glass. The car—his car—_her_ car—was the nicest one in the lot, and she'd be damned if someone keyed it up. She wanted to drive fast and get in trouble and eat exotic food and—and—something that wasn't _boring_. Something new. Something real.

Sakura whipped around. "When are you going home?"

Sasuke shrugged. "When you kick me out."

She tipped her head at him, blunt-cut bangs falling into her eyes. It was the newest fashion, and she hated it the way she hated a lot of things. Sakura studied him, this dark man who'd helped her run away, and thought that maybe he wasn't so bad.

"You make me sound like a crazy-bitch girlfriend," Sakura said.

Sasuke gestured to the trashed hostel room. "You _are_ a crazy-bitch girlfriend."

"But not yours," she said.

"No," Sasuke replied. "Not mine."

Sakura nodded. This was satisfactory. He had no claim on her and he knew it, and for now, that would suffice. She turned back to the window and drummed her fingernails against the sill, tap-tap-tap-_tap_, the last sound harsher and sharper than the others combined. Engrained habit, probably, because she was always waiting for something.

She flopped back on the bed, and looked at Sasuke.

"Why?" she asked.

He shrugged again. "It was something to do."

Sakura studied him again. It was cloudy outside, and the light in through the window was cold and unkind. It left gaunt hollows where his cheeks ought to have been, and his eyes were sunken holes in his face, and she thought—_he's as fucked up as I am_.

"So, where to next?" she asked.

"Wherever you feel like," he replied, careless.

Sakura grinned sharply with all her teeth. "Then come on. Get that gold card you're so proud of out, and let's pay and get the hell out of here!" She reached down to pull him off the bed, and when she pulled him up, her energy was catching.

And that was when Sasuke finally understood the rumours that had always flown about her at school. Sakura was beautiful and dangerous, infectious as a virus, always moving except when she was still as a statue.

She'd cut out a person's heart, laughingly leaving them to bleed, and they would love her still.

Sasuke had no desire to be one of those people.

But at this point, he wasn't even sure if he had a choice.

—

They left the East Coast blazing down the interstate too fast in their expensive car. Sakura took unholy glee in filling the thing, spending money that wasn't hers on ridiculously expensive gas and ridiculously cheap clothes.

"We don't fit in," Sakura laughed, and clicked the heels of her faux-leather boots over washed-out skinny jeans that she'd already accidentally torn at the knee. She was sketched out too-thin, and Sasuke's heart did a terrible thing like squeezing.

_You wouldn't ever fit in anywhere_, Sasuke thought but didn't say.

Her hands twitched around the steering wheel, and when she gunned the engine, it was violent sharp. She smiled at him out of the corner of her mouth, and that was violent-sharp, too; it was like she'd planned all along to trap him in the middle of nowhere with her, and he wasn't even given a chance.

She was harmful like a cigarette, and when they stopped again in a nameless town in a nameless state, she held his hand and dragged him along. Sasuke thought that maybe he ought to have protested, but the only thing he could do was stare and watch as she did as she pleased. She tore holes in the world waiting on him, eating through the fabric of reality.

Sakura was gold against the moon against the snow; she looked at him with tired knowing eyes, and she was the most beautiful thing.

And the winter days never seemed to end.

"What made you like this?" she asked him, one day. They were somewhere near the ocean, though which one neither Sakura nor Sasuke could tell you. There was salt on the breeze, and they drove with the windows cracked to let in the air. Sakura turned the heat up, and sang loudly, off-key, and _wrong_ to everything that came on the radio.

"Hn?"

"What made you dumb enough to come with me? I mean, most people wouldn't even think about just taking the interstate and just, y'know, going, but you didn't—you didn't even question it, you just… came. Why?"

"It was something to do," he said, which wasn't quite a lie.

Sakura's fingers trembled. She tucked her hair behind her ears, the pink shining fluorescent in the winter sun. "Something to do, huh…?"

"Yeah."

"…D'you wanna stop for a burger? I'm kinda hungry," she said.

"Whatever," Sasuke replied.

He thought he would follow her forever, if he could.

If only she knew.

But she didn't, so that was sort of moot.

They turned into a dingy diner. Sakura was probably the first ray of sunshine through that place in a decade, and the air stank of cigarettes and old sweat.

"Is there anywhere I can get a burger in this place?" she laughed.

Sasuke watched as they all turned to look at her. He watched as they all got hungry. Maybe she reminded them of someone—of someone they'd left behind, of someone they used to love, maybe even someone they hadn't met yet.

He hated it, but he didn't know why.

Sakura got her burger.

She grinned at him around a mouthful of greasy sizzling-hot meat and ketchup. It was horrible.

Sasuke wanted to reach across the table and kiss her until she stopped breathing.

He didn't, so that was sort of moot, too.

"You're such a mess," she said, almost affectionately. "Eat something, already!"

"I don't—"

Sakura stuffed his face with fries, and then laughed herself to tears at the look on his face. This probably was a decent reaction, but it was very unfair.

"Thanks," she said at last. "I needed that."

"I'm not even surprised, Sakura," Sasuke replied.

She shot him a smile as wide as the whole sun.

Sasuke's whole world collapsed around him. She was going to consume him, entire, and he wasn't going to do anything to stop her.

_I love you_, he thought.

She was never going to know.

—

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_fin_.


End file.
